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KATHLEEN NORRIS 


i 




THE WORKS OF 
KATHLEEN NORRIS 


MOTHER 


THE TREASURE 



VOLUME 

I 


GARDEN CITY NEW YORK 

DOUBLEDAY PAGE & COMPANY 

192 0 











KATHLEEN NORRIS 



THE WORKS OF 
KATHLEEN NORRIS 


MOTHER 


THE TREASURE 



VOLUME 

I 


GARDEN CITY NEW YORK 

DOUBLEDAY PAGE & COMPANY 

192 0 











Gift 

Publisher 
m 24 ®zi 


COPYRIGHT, 1914, 1920, BY 
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION 
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN 

COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING CO. 


M 27 1921 


To 

J. E. T. and J. A. T. 

As years ago we carried to your knees 
The tales and treasures of eventful days, 

Knowing no deed too humble for your praise, 

Nor any gift too trivial to please, 

So still we bring, with older smiles and tears, 

What gifts we may, to claim the old, dear right; 
Your faith, beyond the silence and the night, 

Your love still close and watching through the yearso 




















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V 

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da y 

m 6 



AUTOGRAPH EDITION 
LIMITED TO 

TWO HUNDRED AND SEVENT Y-S EVEN 

COPIES 

OF WHICH THIS IS 
NO . Q~jJa 


ui/ilk nil . Ma foj , 







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THE WORKS OF 
KATHLEEN NORRIS 




MOTHER 




MOTHER 



CHAPTER I 

ELL, we couldn’t have much worse 
weather than this for the last week 
of school, could we?” Margaret 
Paget said in discouragement. She stood at 
one of the school windows, her hands thrust 
deep in her coat pockets for warmth, her 
eyes following the whirling course of the 
storm that howled outside. The day had 
commenced with snow, but now, at twelve 
o’clock, the rain was falling in sheets, and 
the barren schoolhouse yard and the play- 
shed roof ran muddy streams of water. 

Margaret had taught in this schoolroom 
for nearly four years now, ever since her 
seventeenth birthday, and she knew every 
feature of the big bare room by heart, and 


3 


MOTHER 


4 

every detail of the length of village street 
that the high, uncurtained windows com¬ 
manded. She had stood at this window in 
all weathers: when locust and lilac made 
even ugly little Weston enchanting, and all 
the windows were open to floods of sweet 
spring air; when the dry heat of autumn 
burned over the world; when the common 
little houses and barns, and the bare trees, 
lay dazzling and transfigured under the first 
snowfall, and the wood crackled in the 
schoolroom stove; and when, as to-day, 
mid-winter rains swept drearily past the 
windows, and the children must have the 
lights lighted for their writing lesson. She 
was tired of it all, with an utter and hopeless 
weariness. Tired of the bells, and the 
whispering, and the shuffling feet, of the 
books that smelled of pencil-dust and ink 
and little dusty fingers; tired of the black¬ 
boards, cleaned in great irregular scallops 
by small and zealous arms; of the clear- 
ticking big clock; of little girls who sulked, 


MOTHER ii 

are, twenty-three or four,” Mrs. Porter 
smiled. 

“Yes, but he’s not the kind that forgets!” 
Margaret’s flush was a little resentful. “Oh, 
of course, you can laugh, Emily. I know 
that there are plenty of people who don’t 
mind dragging along day after day, working 
and eating and sleeping—but I’m not that 
kind!” she went on moodily. “I used to 
hope that things would be different; it 
makes me sick to think how brave I was; 
but now here’s Ju coming along and Ted 
growing up, and Bruce’s girl throwing him 
over—it’s all so unfair ! I look at the Cutter 
girls, nearly fifty, and running the post- 
office for thirty years, and Mary Page in 
the Library, and the Norberrys painting 
pillows—and I could scream!” 

“Things will take a turn for the better 
some day, Margaret,” said the other woman, 
soothingly; “and as time goes on you’ll 
find yourself getting more and more pleasure 
out of your work, as I do. Why, I’ve never 


12 MOTHER 

been so securely happy in my life as I am 
now. You’ll feel differently some day.” 

“ Maybe,” Margaret assented unenthusi¬ 
astically. There was a pause. Perhaps 
the girl was thinking that to teach school, 
live in a plain little cottage on the unfash¬ 
ionable Bridge Road, take two roomers, and 
cook and sew and plan for Tom and little 
Emily, as Mrs. Porter did, was not quite an 
ideal existence. 

“You’re an angel, anyway, Emily,” said 
she, affectionately, a little shamefacedly. 
“Don’t mind my growling. I don’t do it 
very often. But I look about at other 
people, and then realize how my mother’s 
slaved for twenty years and how my father’s 
been tied down, and I’ve come to the con¬ 
clusion that while there may have been a 
time when a woman could keep a house, 
tend a garden, sew and spin and raise twelve 
children, things are different now; life is 
more complicated. You owe your husband 
something, you owe yourself something. I 


MOTHER 


13 

want to get on, to study and travel, to be a 
companion to my husband. I don't want 
to be a mere upper servant!" 

“No, of course not," assented Mrs. Por¬ 
ter, vaguely, soothingly. 

“Well, if we are going to stay here, I'll 
light the stove," Margaret said after a 
pause. “B-r-r-r! this room gets cold with 
the windows open! I wonder why Kelly 
doesn't bring us more wood?" 

“I guess—I’ll stay!" Mrs. Porter said 
uncertainly, following her to the big book 
closet off the schoolroom, where a little gas 
stove and a small china closet occupied one 
wide shelf. The water for the tea and 
bouillon was put over the flame in a tiny 
enamelled saucepan; they set forth on a 
fringed napkin crackers and sugar and 
spoons. 

At this point a small girl of eleven with a 
brilliant, tawny head, and a wide and tooth¬ 
less smile, opened the door cautiously, and 
said, blinking rapidly with excitement— 


i 4 MOTHER 

“Mark, Mother theth pleath may thee 
come in?” 

This was Rebecca, one of Margaret’s five 
younger brothers and sisters, and a pupil of 
the school herself. Margaret smiled at the 
eager little face. 

“Hello, darling! Is Mother here? Cer¬ 
tainly she can! I believe”—she said, turn¬ 
ing, suddenly radiant, to Mrs. Potter— 
“I’ll just bet you she’s brought us some 
lunch!” 

“Thee brought uth our luncheth—eggth 
and thpith caketh and everything!” exulted 
Rebecca, vanishing, and a moment later 
Mrs. Paget appeared. 

She was a tall woman, slender but large 
of build, and showing, under a shabby rain¬ 
coat and well pinned-up skirt, the gracious 
generous lines of shoulders and hips, the 
deep-bosomed erect figure that is rarely 
seen except in old daguerreotypes, or the 
ideal of some artist two generations ago. 
The storm to-day had blown an unusual 


MOTHER 


i5 

color into her thin cheeks, her bright, deep 
eyes were like Margaret’s, but the hair that 
once had shown an equally golden lustre 
was dull and smooth now, and touched with 
gray. She came in smiling, and a little 
breathless. 

“ Mother, you didn’t come out in all this 
rain just to bring us our lunches!” Margaret 
protested, kissing the cold, fresh face. 

“Well, look at the lunch you silly girls 
were going to eat!” Mrs. Paget protested 
in turn, in a voice rich with amusement. 
“I love to walk in the rain, Mark; I used to 
love it when I was a girl. Tom and Sister 
are at our house, Mrs. Porter, playing with 
Duncan and Baby. I’ll keep them until 
after school, then I’ll send them over to 
walk home with you.” 

“Oh, you are an angel!” said the younger 
mother, gratefully. And “You are an 
angel, Mother!” Margaret echoed, as Mrs. 
Paget opened a shabby suitcase, and took 
from it a large jar of hot rich soup, a little 


i6 


MOTHER 


blue bowl of stuffed eggs, half a fragrant 
whole-wheat loaf in a white napkin, a little 
glass full of sweet butter, and some of the 
spice cakes to which Rebecca had already 
enthusiastically alluded. 

“There!” said she, pleased with their 
delight, “now take your time, you’ve got 
three-quarters of an hour. Julie devilled 
the eggs, and the sweet-butter man happened 
to come just as I was starting.” 

“Delicious! You’ve saved our lives,” 
Margaret said, busy with cups and spoons. 
“You’ll stay, Mother?” she broke off sud¬ 
denly, as Mrs. Paget closed the suitcase. 

“I can’t, dear! I must go back to the 
children,” her mother said cheerfully. No 
coaxing proving of any avail, Margaret 
went with her to the top of the hall stairs. 

“What’s my girl worrying about?” Mrs. 
Paget asked, with a keen glance at Mar¬ 
garet’s face. 

“Oh, nothing!” Margaret used both 
hands to button the top button of her 


MOTHER 


1 7 

mother’s coat. “I was hungry and cold, 
and I didn’t want to walk home in the rain!” 
she confessed, raising her eyes to the eyes 
so near her own. 

“Well, go back to your lunch,” Mrs. 
Paget urged, after a brief pause, not quite 
satisfied with the explanation. Margaret 
kissed her again, watched her descend the 
stairs, and leaning over the banister called 
down to her softly: 

“Don’t worry about me , Mother!” 

“No—no—no!” her mother called back 
brightly. Indeed, Margaret reflected, go¬ 
ing back to the much-cheered Emily, it 
was not in her nature to worry. 

No, Mother never worried, or if she did, 
nobody ever knew it. Care, fatigue, re¬ 
sponsibility, hard long years of busy days 
and broken nights had left their mark on her 
face; the old beauty that had been hers was 
chiselled to a mere pure outline now; but 
there was a contagious serenity in Mrs. 
Paget’s smile, a clear steadiness in her calm 


i8 


MOTHER 


eyes, and her forehead, beneath an unfash- 
ionably plain sweep of hair, was untroubled 
and smooth. 

The children’s mother was a simple 
woman; so absorbed in the hourly problems 
attendant upon the housing and feeding of 
her husband and family that her own per¬ 
sonal ambitions, if she had any, were quite 
lost sight of, and the actual outlines of her 
character were forgotten by every one, her¬ 
self included. If her busy day marched 
successfully to nightfall; if darkness found 
her husband reading in his big chair, the 
younger children sprawled safe and asleep 
in the shabby nursery, the older ones con¬ 
tented with books or games, the clothes 
sprinkled, the bread set, the kitchen dark 
and clean; Mrs. Paget asked no more of 
life. She would sit, her overflowing work- 
basket beside her, looking from one absorbed 
face to another, thinking perhaps of Julie’s 
new school dress, of Ted’s impending siege 
with the dentist, or of the old bureau up attic 


MOTHER 


19 

that might be mended for Bruce’s room. 
“Thank God we have all warm beds,” she 
would say, when they all went upstairs, 
yawning and chilly. 

She had married, at twenty, the man she 
loved, and had found him better than her 
dreams in many ways, and perhaps dis¬ 
appointing in some few others, but “the 
best man in the world” for all that. That 
for more than twenty years he had been sat¬ 
isfied to stand for nine hours daily behind 
one dingy desk, and to carry home to her 
his unopened salary envelope twice a month, 
she found only admirable. Daddy was 
“steady,” he was “so gentle with the 
children,” he was “the easiest man in the 
world to cook for.” “Bless his heart, no 
woman ever had less to worry over in her 
husband!” she would say, looking from her 
kitchen window to the garden where he 
trained the pea-vines, with the children’s 
yellow heads bobbing about him. She 
never analyzed his character, much less 


20 MOTHER 

criticised him. Good and bad, he was 
taken for granted; she was much more leni¬ 
ent to him than to any of the children. She 
welcomed the fast-coming babies as gifts 
from God, marvelled over their tiny perfect¬ 
ness, dreamed over the soft relaxed little 
forms with a heart almost too full for prayer. 
She was, in a word, old-fashioned, hope¬ 
lessly out of the modern current of thoughts 
and events. She secretly regarded her 
children as marvellous, even while she 
laughed down their youthful conceit and 
punished their naughtiness. 

Thinking a little of all these things, as a 
girl with her own wifehood and motherhood 
all before her does think, Margaret went 
back to her hot luncheon. One o'clock 
found her at her desk, refreshed in spirit 
by her little outburst, and much fortified 
in body. The room was well aired, and a 
reinforced fire roared in the little stove. 
One of the children had brought her a spray 


MOTHER 


21 


of pine, and the spicy fragrance of it re¬ 
minded her that Christmas and the Christ¬ 
mas vacation were near; her mind was pleas¬ 
antly busy with anticipation of the play that 
the Pagets always wrote and performed 
some time during the holidays, and with the 
New Year’s costume dance at the Hall, and 
a dozen lesser festivities. 

Suddenly, in the midst of a droning spell¬ 
ing lesson, there was a jarring interruption. 
From the world outside came a child’s shrill 
screaming, which was instantly drowned 
in a chorus of frightened voices, and in the 
schoolroom below her own Margaret heard 
a thundering rush of feet, and answering 
screams. With a suffocating terror at her 
heart she ran to the window, followed by 
every child in the room. 

The rain had stopped now, and the sky 
showed a pale, cold, yellow light low in the 
west. At the schoolhouse gate an immense 
limousine car had come to a stop. The 
driver, his face alone visible between a great 


22 


MOTHER 


leather coat and visored leather cap, was 
talking unheard above the din. A tall 
woman, completely enveloped in sealskins, 
had evidently jumped from the limousine, 
and now held in her arms what made Mar¬ 
garet’s heart turn sick and cold, the limp 
figure of a small girl. 

About these central figures there surged 
the terrified crying small children of the 
just-dismissed primer class, and in the half 
moment that Margaret watched, Mrs. Por¬ 
ter, white and shaking, and another teacher, 
Ethel Elliot, an always excitable girl, who was 
now sobbing and chattering hysterically, ran 
out from the school, each followed by her own 
class of crowding and excited boys and girls. 

With one horrified exclamation, Mar¬ 
garet ran downstairs, and out to the gate. 
Mrs. Porter caught at her arm as she passed 
her in the path. 

“Oh, my God, Margaret! It’s poor little 
Dorothy Scott!” she said. “They’ve killed 
her. The car went completely over her!” 


MOTHER 


23 

“Oh, Margaret, don’t go near, oh, how 
can you!” screamed Miss Elliot. “Oh, and 
she’s all they have! Who’ll tell her mother! ” 

With astonishing ease, for the children 
gladly recognized authority, Margaret 
pushed through the group to the motor-car. 

“Stop screaming—stop that shouting at 
once—keep still, every one of you!” she 
said angrily, shaking various shoulders as 
she went with such good effect that the 
voice of the woman in sealskins could be 
heard by the time Margaret reached her. 

“I don’t think she’s badly hurt!” said 
this woman, nervously and eagerly. She 
was evidently badly shaken, and was very 
white. “Do quiet them, can’t you?” she 
said, with a sort of apprehensive impatience. 
“Can’t we take her somewhere, and get a 
doctor? Can’t we get out of this?” 

Margaret took the child in her own arms, 
Little Dorothy roared afresh, but to Mar¬ 
garet’s unspeakable relief she twisted about 
and locked her arms tightly about the loved 


MOTHER 


24 

teacher’s neck. The other woman watched 
them anxiously. 

“That blood on her frock’s just nose¬ 
bleed,” she said; “but I think the car went 
over her! I assure you we were running 

very slowly. How it happened-! But 

I don’t think she was struck.” 

“Nosebleed!” Margaret echoed, with a 
great breath. “No,” she said quietly, over 
the agitated little head; “I don’t think she’s 
much hurt. We’ll take her in. Now, look 
here, children,” she added loudly to the as¬ 
sembled pupils of the Weston Grammar 
School, whom mere curiosity had somewhat 
quieted, “I want every one of you children 
to go back to your schoolrooms; do you 
understand? Dorothy’s had a bad scare, 
but she’s got no bones broken, and we’re 
going to have a doctor see that she’s all 
right. I want you to see how quiet you can 
be. Mrs. Porter, may my class go into 
your room a little while?” 

“Certainly,” said Mrs. Porter, eager to 



MOTHER 


25 

cooperate, and much relieved to have her 
share of the episode take this form. “Form 
lines, children,” she added calmly. 

“Ted,” said Margaret to her own small 
brother, who was one of Mrs. Porter’s 
pupils, and who had edged closer to her than 
any boy unprivileged by relationship dared, 
“will you go down the street, and ask old 
Doctor Potts to come here? And then go 
tell Dorothy’s mother that Dorothy has had 
a little bump, and that Miss Paget says 
she’s all right, but that she’d like her mother 
to come for her.” 

“Sure I will, Mark!” Theodore responded 
enthusiastically, departing on a run. 

“Mama!” sobbed the little sufferer at 
this point, hearing a familiar word. 

“Yes, darling, you want Mama, don’t 
you?” Margaret said soothingly, as she 
started with her burden up the schoolhouse 
steps. “What were you doing, Dorothy,” 
she went on pleasantly, “to get under that 
big car?” 


26 


MOTHER 


“I dropped my ball!” wailed the small 
girl, her tears beginning afresh, “and it 
rolled and rolled. And I didn’t see the 
automobile, and I didn't see it! And I fell 
down and b-b-bumped my nose!” 

“Well, I should think you did!” Mar¬ 
garet said, laughing. “Mother won’t know 
you at all with such a muddy face and such 
a muddy apron!” 

Dorothy laughed shakily at this, and 
several other little girls, passing in orderly 
file, laughed heartily. Margaret crossed 
the lines of children to the room where they 
played and ate their lunches on wet days. 
She shut herself in with the child and the 
fur-clad lady. 

“Now you’re all right!” said Margaret, 
gayly. And Dorothy was presently com¬ 
fortable in a big chair, wrapped in a rug 
from the motor-car, with her face washed, 
and her head dropped languidly back 
against her chair, as became an interesting 
invalid. The Irish janitor was facetious 


MOTHER 


27 

as he replenished the fire, and made her 
laugh again. Margaret gave her a numeri¬ 
cal chart to play with, and saw with satis¬ 
faction that the little head was bent inter¬ 
estedly over it. 

Quiet fell upon the school; the muffled 
sound of lessons recited in concert presently 
reached them. Theodore returned, report¬ 
ing that the doctor would come as soon as 
he could and that Dorothy’s mother was 
away at a card-party, but that Dorothy’s 
“girl” would come for her as soon as the 
bread was out of the oven. There was 
nothing to do but wait. 

“It seems a miracle,” said the strange 
lady, in a low tone, when she and Margaret 
were alone again with the child. “But I 
don’t believe she was scratched!” 

“I don’t think so,” Margaret agreed. 
“Mother says no child who can cry is very 
badly hurt.” 

“They made such a horrible noise,” said 
the other, sighing wearily. She passed a 


28 


MOTHER 


white hand, with one or two blazing great 
stones upon it, across her forehead. Mar¬ 
garet had leisure now to notice that by all 
signs this was a very great lady indeed. 
The quality of her furs, the glimpse of her 
gown that the loosened coat showed, her 
rings, and most of all the tones of her voice, 
the authority of her manner, the well- 
groomed hair and skin and hands, all 
marked the thoroughbred. 

“Do you know that you managed that 
situation very cleverly just now?” said the 
lady, with a keen glance that made Margaret 
color. “One has such a dread of the crowd, 
just public sentiment, you know. Some 
officious bystander calls the police, they 
crowd against your driver, perhaps a brick 
gets thrown. We had an experience in 
England once-” She paused, then in¬ 

terrupted herself. “But I don’t know your 
name?” she said brightly. 

Margaret supplied it, was led to talk a 
little of her own people. 



MOTHER 


29 

“Seven of you, eh? Seven’s too many,” 
said the visitor, with the assurance that 
Margaret was to learn characterized her. 
“Eve two myself, two girls,” she went on. 
“I wanted a boy, but they’re nice girls. 
And you’ve six brothers and sisters? Are 
they all as handsome as you and this Teddy 
of yours? And why do you like teaching?” 

“Why do I like it?” Margaret said, en¬ 
joying these confidences and the unusual 
experience of sitting idle in mid-afternoon. 
“I don’t, I hate it.” 

“I see. But then why don’t you come 
down to New York, and do something else?” 
the other woman asked. 

“I’m needed at home, and I don’t know 
any one there,” Margaret said simply. 

“I see,” the lady said again thoughtfully. 
There was a pause. Then the same speaker 
said reminiscently, “I taught school once 
for three months when I was a girl, to show 
my father I could support myself.” 

“I’vetaught for four years,” Margaret said. 


MOTHER 


30 

“ Well, if you ever want to try something 
else—there are such lots of fascinating 
things a girl can do now—be sure you come 
and see me -about it,” the stranger said. 
“I am Mrs. Carr-Boldt, of New York.” 

Margaret’s amazed eyes flashed to Mrs. 
Carr-Boldt’s face; her cheeks crimsoned. 

“Mrs. Carr-Boldt!” she echoed blankly. 

“Why not?” smiled the lady, not at all 
displeased. 

“Why,” stammered Margaret, laughing 
and rosy, “why, nothing—only I never 
dreamed who you were!” she finished, a 
little confused. 

And indeed it never afterward seemed to 
her anything short of a miracle that brought 
the New York society woman—famed on 
two continents and from ocean to ocean for 
her jewels, her entertainments, her gowns, 
her establishments—into a Weston school¬ 
room, and into Margaret Paget’s life. 

“I was on my way to New York now,” 
said Mrs. Carr-Boldt. 


MOTHER 


3 i 

“ I don’t see why you should be delayed,” 
Margaret said, glad to be able to speak 
normally, with such a fast-beating and 
pleasantly excited heart. “I’m sure Dor¬ 
othy’s all right.” 

“Oh, I’d rather wait. I like my com¬ 
pany,” said the other. And Margaret 
decided in that instant that there never was 
a more deservedly admired and copied and 
quoted woman. 

Presently their chat was interrupted by 
the tramp of the departing school schildren; 
the other teachers peeped in, were reassured, 
and went their ways. Then came the doc¬ 
tor, to pronounce the entirely cheerful Dor¬ 
othy unhurt, and to bestow upon her some 
hoarhound drops. Mrs. Carr-Boldt settled 
at once with the doctor, and when Margaret 
saw the size of the bill that was pressed 
into his hand, she realized that she had done 
her old friend a good turn. 

“Use it up on your poor people,” said 
Mrs. Carr-Boldt, to his protestations; and 


MOTHER 


32 

when he had gone, and Dorothy’s “girl” ap¬ 
peared, she tipped that worthy and amazed 
Teuton, and after promising Dorothy a big 
doll from a New York shop, sent the child 
and maid home in the motor-car. 

“I hope this hasn’t upset your plans,” 
Margaret said, as they stood waiting in the 
doorway. It was nearly five o’clock, the 
school was empty and silent. 

“No, not exactly. I had hoped to get 
home for dinner. But I think I’ll get Wool- 
cock to take me back to Dayton; I’ve some 
very dear friends there who’ll give me a cup 
of tea. Then I’ll come back this way and 
get home, by ten, I should think, for a late 
supper.” Then, as the limousine appeared, 
Mrs. Carr-Boldt took both Margaret’s hands 
in hers, and said, “And now good-bye, my 
dear girl. I’ve got your address, and I’m go¬ 
ing to send you something pretty to remem¬ 
ber me by. You saved me from I don’t know 
what annoyance and publicity. And don’t 
forget that when you come to New York 


MOTHER 


33 

I’m going to help you meet the people 
you want to, and give you a start if I can. 
You’re far too clever and good-look¬ 
ing to waste your life down here. Good¬ 
bye!” 

“Good-bye!” Margaret said, her cheeks 
brilliant, her head awhirl. 

She stood unmindful of the chilly evening 
air, watching the great motor-car wheel and 
slip into the gloom. The rain was over; a 
dying wind moaned mysteriously through 
the dusk. Margaret went slowly upstairs, 
pinned on her hat, buttoned her long coat 
snugly about her. She locked the school¬ 
room door, and, turning the corner, plunged 
her hands into her pockets, and faced the 
wind bravely. Deepening darkness and 
coldness were about her, but she felt sur¬ 
rounded by the warmth and brightness of 
her dreams. She saw the brilliant streets 
of a big city, the carriages and motor-cars 
coming and going, the idle, lovely women 
in their sumptuous gowns and hats. These 


MOTHER 


34 

things were real, near—almost attainable— 
to-night. 

“Mrs. Carr-Boldt!” Margaret said, “the 
darling! I wonder if I’ll ever see her 
again! 


CHAPTER II 


I IFE in the shabby, commonplace house 
that sheltered the Paget family 
sometimes really did seem to pro¬ 
ceed, as Margaret had suggested, in a long 
chain of violent shocks, narrow escapes, and 
closely averted catastrophes. No sooner 
was Duncan’s rash pronounced not to be 
scarlet fever than Robert swallowed a penny, 
or Beck set fire to the dining-room waste¬ 
basket, or Dad foresaw the immediate failure 
of the Weston Home Savings Bank, and 
the inevitable loss of his position there. 
Sometimes there was a paternal explosion 
because Bruce liked to murmur vaguely of 
“dandy chances in Manila,” or because 
Julie, pretty, excitable, and sixteen, had an 
occasional dose of stage fever, and would 
stammer desperately between convulsive 


3 6 MOTHER 

sobs that she wasn’t half as much afraid of 
“the terrible temptations of the life” as she 
was afraid of dying a poky old maid in 
Weston. In short, the home was crowded, 
the Pagets were poor, and every one of the 
seven possessed a spirited and distinct en¬ 
tity. All the mother’s effort could not keep 
them always contented. Growing ambi¬ 
tions made the Weston horizon seem nar¬ 
row and mean, and the young eyes that 
could not see beyond to-morrow were often 
wet with rebellious tears. 

Through it all they loved each other; 
sometimes whole weeks went by in utter 
harmony; the children contented over 
“Parches” on the hearthrug in the winter 
evenings, Julie singing in the morning sun¬ 
light, as she filled the vases from the shabby 
marguerite bushes on the lawn. But there 
were other times when to the dreamy 
studious Margaret the home circle seemed 
all discord, all ugly dinginess and thread¬ 
bareness; the struggle for ease and beauty 


MOTHER 


37 

and refinement seemed hopeless and over¬ 
whelming. In these times she would find 
herself staring thoughtfully at her mother’s 
face, bent over the mending basket, or her 
eyes would leave the chessboard that held 
her father’s attention so closely, and move 
from his bald spot, with its encircling crown 
of fluffy gray, to his rosy face, with its 
kind, intent blue eyes and the little lines 
about his mouth that his moustache didn’t 
hide—with a half-formed question in her 
heart. What hadn’t they done, these dear¬ 
est people, to be always struggling, always 
tired, always “behind the game?” Why 
should they be eternally harassed by plum¬ 
ber’s bills, and dentists’ bills, and shoes 
that would wear out, and school-books that 
must be bought ? Why weren’t they hold¬ 
ing their place in Weston society, the place 
to which they were entitled by right of the 
Quincy grandfather, and the uncles who 
were judges? 

. And in answer Margaret came despond- 


MOTHER 


38 

ently to the decision, “If you have children, 
you never have anything else! ” How could 
Mother keep up with her friends, when for 
some fifteen years she had been far too busy 
to put on a dainty gown in the afternoon, 
and serve a hospitable cup of tea on the east 
porch? Mother was buttering bread for 
supper, then; opening little beds and laying 
out little nightgowns, starting Ted off for 
the milk, washing small hands and faces, 
soothing bumps and binding cuts, admonish¬ 
ing, praising, directing. Mother was only 
too glad to sink wearily into her rocker after 
dinner, and, after a few spirited visits to the 
rampant nursery upstairs, express the hope 
that nobody would come in to-night. Grad¬ 
ually the friends dropped away, and the 
social life of Weston flowed smoothly on 
without the Pagets. 

But when Margaret began to grow up, 
she grasped the situation with all the keen¬ 
ness of a restless and ambitious nature. 
Weston, detested Weston, it must appar- 


MOTHER 


39 

ently be. Very well, she would make the 
best of Weston. Margaret called on her 
mother’s old friends; she was tireless in 
charming little attentions. Her own first 
dances had not been successful; she and 
Bruce were not good dancers, Margaret had 
not been satisfied with her gowns, they both 
felt out of place. When Julie’s dancing 
days came along, Margaret saw to it that 
everything was made much easier. She 
planned social evenings at home, and ex¬ 
hausted herself preparing for them, that 
Julie might know the “right people.” To 
her mother all people were alike, if they 
were kind and not vulgar; Margaret felt 
very differently. It was a matter ot the 
greatest satisfaction to her when Julie blos¬ 
somed into a fluffy-haired butterfly, tre¬ 
mendously in demand, in spite of much- 
cleaned slippers and often-pressed frocks. 
Margaret arranged Christmas theatricals, 
May picnics, Fourth of July gatherings. 
She never failed Bruce when this dearest 


MOTHER 


40 

brother wanted her company; she was, as 
Mrs. Paget told her over and over, “the 
sweetest daughter any woman ever had.” 
But deep in her heart she knew moods of 
bitter distaste and restlessness. The strug¬ 
gle did not seem worth the making; the odds 
against her seemed too great. 

Still dreaming in the winter dark, she 
went through the home gate, and up the 
porch steps of a roomy, cheap house that 
had been built in the era of scalloped and 
pointed shingles, of colored glass embellish¬ 
ments around the window-panes, of perfo¬ 
rated scroll work and wooden railings in 
Grecian designs. A mass of wet over¬ 
shoes lay on the porch, and two or three of 
the weather-stained porch rockers swayed 
under the weight of spread wet raincoats. 
Two opened umbrellas wheeled in the cur¬ 
rent of air that came around the house; the 
porch ran water. While Margaret was 
adding her own rainy-day equipment to the 


MOTHER 


4i 

others, a golden-brown setter, one ecstatic 
wriggle from nose to tail, flashed into view, 
and came fawning to her feet. 

“Hello, Bran!” Margaret said, propping 
herself against the house with one hand, 
while she pulled at a tight overshoe. “ Hello, 
old fellow! Well, did they lock him out ? ” 

She let herself and a freezing gust of air 
into the dark hall, groping to the hat-rack 
for matches. While she was lighting the 
gas, a very pretty girl of sixteen, with crim¬ 
son cheeks and tumbled soft dark hair, 
came to the dining-room door. This was 
her sister Julie, Margaret’s roommate and 
warmest admirer, and for the last year or 
two her inseparable companion. Julie had 
her finger in a book, but now she closed it, 
and said affectionately between her yawns: 
“Come in here, darling! You must be 
dead.” 

“Don’t let Bran in,” cried some one from 
upstairs. 

“He is in, Mother!” Margaret called 


MOTHER 


42 

back, and Rebecca and the three small 
boys—Theodore, the four-year-old baby, 
Robert, and Duncan, a grave little lad of 
seven—all rushed out of the dining-room 
together, shouting, as they fell on the de¬ 
lighted dog: 

“Aw, leave him in! Aw, leave the poor 
little feller in! Come on, Bran, come on, 
old feller! Leave him in, Mark, can’t we?” 

Kissing and hugging the dog, and stum¬ 
bling over each other and over him, they 
went back to the dining-room, which was 
warm and stuffy. A coal fire was burning 
low in the grate, the window-panes were 
beaded, and the little boys had marked their 
initials in the steam. They had also pushed 
the fringed table-cover almost off, and scat¬ 
tered the contents of a box of “Lotto” over 
the scarred walnut top. The room was 
shabby, ugly, comfortable. Julie and Mar¬ 
garet had established a tea-table in the bay 
window, had embroidered a cover for the 
wide couch, had burned the big wooden 



MOTHER 


43 

bowl that was supposedly always full of 
nuts or grapes or red apples. But these 
touches were lost in the mass of less pleasing 
detail. The “body Brussels” carpet was 
worn, the wall paper depressing, the wood¬ 
work was painted dark brown, with an 
imitation burl smeared in by the painter’s 
thumb. The chairs were of several differ¬ 
ent woods and patterns, the old black wal¬ 
nut sideboard clumsy and battered. About 
the fire stood some comfortable worn chairs. 
Margaret dropped wearily into one of these* 
and the dark-eyed Julie hung over her with 
little affectionate attentions. The children 
returned to their game. 

“Well, what a time you had with little 
Dolly Scott!” said Julie, sympathetically. 
“Ted’s been getting it all mixed up! Tell 
us about it. Poor old Mark, you’re all in, 
aren’t you? Mark, would you like a cup 
of tea?” 

“Love it!” Margaret said, a little sur¬ 
prised, for this luxury was not common. 


MOTHER 


44 

“And toast—we’ll toast it!” said Theo¬ 
dore, enthusiastically. 

“No, no—no tea!” said Mrs. Paget, 
coming in at this point with some sewing in 
her hands. “ Don’t spoil your dinner, now, 
Mark dear; tea doesn’t do you any good. 
And I think Blanche is saving the cream for 
an apple tapioca. Theodore, Mother wants 
you to go right downstairs for some coal, 
dear. And, Julie, you’d better start your 
table; it’s close to six. Put up the game, 
Rebecca!” 

There was general protest. Duncan, it 
seemed, needed only “two more” to win. 
Little Robert, who was benevolently al¬ 
lowed by the other children to play the 
game exactly as he pleased, screamed de¬ 
lightedly that he needed only one more, and 
showed a card upon which even the blank 
spaces were lavishly covered with glass. 
He was generously conceded the victory, 
and kissed by Rebecca and Julie as he made 
his way to his mother’s lap. 



MOTHER 


45 

“Why, this can’t be Robert Paget!” said 
Mrs. Paget, putting aside her sewing to 
gather him in her arms. “Not this great, 
big boy!” 

“Yes, I am!” the little fellow asserted 
joyously, dodging her kisses. 

“Good to get home!” Margaret said luxu¬ 
riously. 

“You must sleep late in the morning,” her 
mother commanded affectionately. 

“Yes, because you have to be fresh for 
the party Monday!” exulted Julie. She 
had flung a white cloth over the long table, 
and was putting the ringed napkins down 
with rapid bangs. “And New Year’s Eve’s 
the dance!” she went on buoyantly. “I 
just love Christmas, anyway!” 

“Rebecca, ask Blanche if she needs me,” 
that was Mother. 

“You’d go perfectly crazy about her, Ju, 
she’s the most fascinating, and the most 
unaffected woman!” Margaret was full of 
the day’s real event. 


MOTHER 


46 

“And Mother theth that Ted and Dune 
and I can have our friendth in on the day 
after Chrithmath to thee the Chrithmath 
tree!” That was Rebecca, who added, 
“Blanche theth no, Mother, unleth you 
want to make thorn cream gravy for the 
chopth!” 

“And, Mark, Eleanor asked if Bruce 
and you and I weren’t going as Pierrot and 
Pierettes; she’s simply crazy to find out!” 
This was Julie again; and then Margaret, 
coaxingly, “Do make cream gravy for 
Bruce, Mother. Give Baby to me!” and 
little Robert’s elated “I know three things 
Becky’s going to get for Christmas, Mark!” 

“Well, I think I will, there’s milk,” Mrs. 
Paget conceded, rising. “Put Bran out, 
Teddy; or put him in the laundry if you 
want to, while we have dinner.” Mar¬ 
garet presently followed her mother into 
the kitchen, stopping in a crowded pas¬ 
sageway to tie an apron over her school 
gown. 


MOTHER 


47 

“Bruce come in yet?” she said in a low 
voice. 

Her mother flashed her a sympathetic look. 

“I don’t believe he’s coming, Mark.” 

“Isn’t! Oh, Mother! Oh, Mother, docs 
he feel so badly about Betty?” 

“I suppose so!” Mrs. Paget went on 
with her bread cutting. 

“But, Mother, surely he didn’t expect to 
marry Betty Forsythe?” 

“I don’t know why not, Mark. She’s a 
sweet little thing.” 

“But, Mother-” Margaret was a 

little at a loss. “We don’t seem old enough 
to really be getting married!” she said, a 
little lamely. 

“Brucie came in about half-past five, and 
said he was going over to Richie’s,” Mrs. 
Paget said, with a sigh. 

“In all this rain—that long walk!” Mar¬ 
garet ejaculated, as she filled a long wicker 
basket with sliced bread. 

“I think an evening of work with Richie 



48 MOTHER 

will do him a world of good,” said his 
mother. There was a pause. “There's 
Dad. I’ll go in,” she said, suddenly ending 
it, as the front door slammed. 

Margaret went in, too, to kiss her father, 
a tired-looking, gray-haired man close to 
fifty, who had taken her chair by the fire. 
Mrs. Paget was anxious to be assured that 
his shoulders and shoes were not damp. 

“But your hands are icy, Daddy,” said 
she, as she sat down behind a smoking tureen 
at the head of the table. “Come, have 
your nice hot soup, dear. Pass that to 
Dad, Becky, and light the other gas. What 
sort of a day?” 

“A hard day,” said Mr. Paget, heavily. 
“Here, one of you girls put Baby into his 
chair. Let go, Bob—I’m too tired to-night 
for monkey-shines!” He sat down stiffly. 
“Where’s Bruce? Can’t that boy remem¬ 
ber what time we have dinner?” 

“Bruce is going to have supper with 
Richie Williams, Dad,” said Mrs. Paget, 


MOTHER 


49 

serenely. “They’ll get out their blue prints 
afterward and have a good evening’s work. 
Fill the glasses before you sit down, Ju. 
Come, Ted—put that back on the mantel. 
Come, Becky! Tell Daddy about what 
happened to-day, Mark—— ” 

They all drew up their chairs. Robert, 
recently graduated from a high chair, was 
propped upon “The Officers of the Civil 
War” and “The Household Book of Verse.” 
Julie tied on his bib, and kissed the back of 
his fat little neck before she slipped into her 
own seat. The mother sat between Ted 
and Duncan, for reasons that immediately 
became obvious. Margaret sat by her 
father, and attended to his needs, telling 
him all about the day, and laying her pretty 
slim hand over his as it rested beside his 
plate. The chops and cream gravy, as 
well as a mountain of baked potatoes, and 
various vegetables, were under discussion, 
when every one stopped short in surprise 
at hearing the doorbell ring. 




MOTHER 


So 

“Who-?” said Margaret, turning puz¬ 

zled brows to her mother, and “I’m sure 

I-” her mother answered, shaking her 

head. Ted was heard to mutter uneasily 
that, gee, maybe it was old Pembroke, mad 
because the fellers had soaked his old 
-skate with snowballs; Julie dimpled and 
said, “ Maybe it’s flowers!” Robert shouted 
“ Bakeryman!” more because he had re¬ 
cently acquired the word than because of 
any conviction on the subject. In the end 
Julie went to the door, with the four chil¬ 
dren in her wake. When she came back, 
she looked bewildered, and the children a 
little alarmed. 

“It’s—it’s Mrs. Carr-Boldt, Mother,” 
said Julie. 

“Well, don’t leave her standing there in 
the cold, dear!” Mrs. Paget said, rising 
quickly, to go into the hall. Margaret, her 
heart thumping with an unanalyzed prem¬ 
onition of something pleasant, and ner¬ 
vous, too, for the hospitality of the Pagets, 




MOTHER 


5i 

followed her. So they were all presently 
crowded into the hall, Mrs. Paget all hos¬ 
pitality, Margaret full of a fear she would 
have denied that her mother would not be 
equal to the occasion, the children curious, 
Julie a little embarrassed. 

The visitor, fur-clad, rain-spattered—for 
it was raining again—and beaming, stretched 
a hand to Mrs. Paget. 

“You’re Mrs. Paget, of course—this is an 
awful hour to interrupt you/’ she said in 
her big, easy way, “and there’s my Miss 

Paget—how do you do? But you see I 

• 

must get up to town to-night—in this door ? 
I can see perfectly, thank you—and I did 
want a little talk with you first. Now, 
what a shame!”—for the gas, lighted by 
Theodore at this point, revealed Duncan’s 
bib, and the napkins some of the others 
were still carrying. “I’ve interrupted your 
dinner! Won’t you let me wait here un¬ 
til-” 

“Perhaps—if you haven’t had your sup- 





52 


MOTHER 


per—you will have some with us,” said Mrs. 
Paget, a little uncertainly. Margaret in¬ 
wardly shuddered, but Mrs. Carr-Boldt was 
gracious. 

“Mrs. Paget, that’s charming of you,” 
she said. “But I had tea at Dayton, and 
mustn’t lose another moment. I shan’t 
dine until I get home. I’m the busiest 
woman in the world, you know. Now, it 
won’t take me two minutes-” 

She was seated now, her hands still deep 
in her muff, for the parlor was freezing cold. 
Mrs. Paget, with a rather bewildered look, 
sat down, too. 

“You can run back to your dinners,” said 
she to the children. “Take them, Julie. 
Mark, dear, will you help the pudding?” 
They all filed dutifully out of the room, and 
Margaret, excited and curious, continued 
a meal that might have been of sawdust and 
sand for all she knew. The strain did not 
last long; in about ten minutes Mrs. Paget 
looked into the room, with a rather worried 



MOTHER 


53 

expression, and said, a little breathlessly: 
“Daddy, can you come here a moment?— 
You’re all right, dear,” she added, as Mr. 
Paget indicated with an embarrassed ges¬ 
ture his well-worn house-coat. They went 
out together. The young people sat almost 
without speaking, listening -to the indis¬ 
tinguishable murmur from the adjoining 
room, and smiling mysteriously at each 
other. Then Margaret was called, and 
went as far as the dining-room door, and 
came back to put her napkin uncertainly 
down at her place, hesitated, arranged her 
gown carefully, and finally went out again. 
They heard her voice with the others in the 
parlor . . . questioning . . . laugh¬ 
ing .. . 

Presently the low murmur broke into 
audible farewells; chairs were pushed back, 
feet scraped in the hall. 

“Good-night, then!” said Mrs. Carr- 

Boldt’s clear tones, “ and so sorry to have- 

Good-night, Mr. Paget! —Oh, thank you—but 



MOTHER 


54 

I’m well wrapped. Thankyou! Good-night, 
dear! I’ll see you again soon—I’ll write.” 

And then came the honking of the motor¬ 
car, and a great swish where it grazed a wet 
bush near the house. Somebody lowered 
the gas in the hall, and Mrs. Paget’s voice 
said regretfully, “I wish we had had a fire 
in the parlor—just one of the times!—but 
there’s no help for it.” They all came in, 
Margaret flushed, starry-eyed; her father 
and mother a little serious. The three 
blinked at the brighter light, and fell upon 
the cooling chops as if eating were the im¬ 
portant business of the moment. 

“We waited the pudding,” said Julie. 
“What is it?” 

“Why-” Mrs. Paget began, hesitat¬ 

ingly. Mr. Paget briskly took the matter 
out of her hands. 

“This lady,” he said, with an air of mak¬ 
ing any further talk unnecessary, “needs a 
secretary, and she has offered your sister 
Margaret the position. That’s the whole 



MOTHER 


55 

affair in a nutshell. I’m not at all sure 
that your mother and I think it a wise offer 
for Margaret to accept, and I want to say 
here and now that I don't want any child 
of mine to speak of this matter, or make it a 
matter of general gossip in the neighbor¬ 
hood. Mother, I'd like very much to have 
Blanche make me a fresh cup of tea." 

“Wants Margaret!" gasped Julie, un¬ 
affected—so astonishing was the news—by 
her father's unusual sternness. “ Oh, Mother! 
Oh, Mark! Oh, you lucky thing! When is 
she coming down here?" 

“She isn't coming down here—she wants 
Mark to go to her—that's it," said her 
mother. 

“Mark—in New York!" shrilled Theo¬ 
dore. Julie got up to rush around the table 
and kiss her sister; the younger children 
laughed and shouted. 

“There is no occasion for all this," said 
Mr. Paget, but mildly, for the fresh tea had 
arrived. “ Just quiet them down, will you, 



56 MOTHER 

Mother? I see nothing very extraordinary 
in the matter. This Mrs.—Mrs. Carr- 
Boldt—is it?—needs a secretary and com¬ 
panion; and she offers the position to Mark.” 

“But—but she never even saw Mark 
until to-day!” marvelled Julie. 

“I hardly see how that affects it, my 
dear!” her father observed unenthusias¬ 
tically. 

“Why, I think it makes it simply extraor¬ 
dinary!” exulted the generous little sister. 
“Oh, Mark, isn’t this just the sort of thing 
you would have wished to happen! Secre¬ 
tary work—just what you love to do! And 
you, with your beautiful handwriting, you’ll 
just be invaluable to her! And your German 
—and I’ll bet you’ll just have them all 
adoring you-!” 

“Oh, Ju, if I only can do it!” burst from 
Margaret, with a little childish gasp. She 
was sitting back from the table, twisted 
about so that she sat sideways, her hands 
clasped about the top bar of her chair-back. 





MOTHER 


57 

Her tawny soft hair was loosened about 
her face, her dark eyes aflame. “Lenox, 
she said,” Margaret went on dazedly; “and 
Europe, and travelling everywhere! And 
a hundred dollars a month, and nothing to 
spend it on, so I can still help out here! Why, 
it—I can’t believe it!”—she looked from 
one smiling interested face to another, and 
suddenly her radiance underwent a quick 
eclipse. Her lip trembled, and she tried to 
laugh as she pushed her chair back, and ran 
to the arms her mother opened. “Oh, 
Mother!” sobbed Margaret, clinging there, 
“do you want me to go—shall I go? I’ve 
always been so happy here, and I feel so 
ashamed of being discontented—and I don’t 
deserve a thing like this to happen to me!” 

“Why, God bless her heart!” said Mrs. 
Paget, tenderly; “of course you’ll go!” 

“Oh, you silly! I’ll never speak to you 
again if you don’t!” laughed Julie, through 
sympathetic tears. 

Theodore and Duncan immediately burst 






5 8 MOTHER 

into a radiant reminiscence of their one 
brief visit to New York; Rebecca was heard 
to murmur that she would “vithet Mark 
thome day”; and the baby, tugging at his 
mother’s elbow, asked sympathetically if 
Mark was naughty, and was caught be¬ 
tween his sister’s and his mother’s arms and 
kissed by them both. Mr. Paget, picking 
his paper from the floor beside his chair, 
took an armchair by the fire, stirred the 
coals noisily, and while cleaning his glasses, 
observed rather huskily that the little girl 
always knew she could come back again if 
anything went wrong. 

‘‘But suppose / don’t suit?” suggested 
Margaret, sitting back on her heels, re¬ 
freshed by tears, and with her arms laid 
across her mother’s lap. 

“Oh, you’ll suit” said Julie, confidently; 
and Mrs. Paget smoothed the girl’s hair 
back and said affectionately, “I don’t think 
she’ll find many girls like you for the asking, 
Mark!” 


MOTHER 


59 

“ Reading English with the two little girls/’ 
said Margaret, dreamily, “and answering notes 
and invitations. And keeping books-” 

“You can do that anyway,” said her 
father, over his paper. 

“And dinner lists, you know, Mother— 
doesn’t it sound like an English story!” 
Margaret stopped in the middle of an ecsta¬ 
tic wriggle. “Mother, will you pray I 
succeed?” she said solemnly. 

“Just be your own dear simple self, 
Mark,” her mother advised. “January!” 
she added, with a great sigh. “It’s the 
first break, isn’t it, Dad? Think of trying 
to get along without our Mark!” 

“January!” Julie was instantly alert. 
“Why, but you’ll need all sorts of clothes!” 

“Oh, she says there’s a sewing woman 
always in the house,” Margaret said, almost 
embarrassed by the still-unfolding advan¬ 
tages of the proposition. “ I can have her do 
whatever’s left over.” Her father lowered 
his paper to give her a shrewd glance. 



Go 


MOTHER 


“I suppose somebody knows something 
about this Mrs. Carr-Boldt, Mother?” 
asked he. “She’s all right, I suppose?” 

“Oh, Dad, her name’s always in the 
papers,” Julie burst out; and the mother 
smiled as she said, “We’ll be pretty sure of 
everything before we let our Mark go!” 
Later, when the children had been dismissed 
and he himself was going, rather stiffly, 
toward the stairs, Mr. Paget again voiced 
a mild doubt. 

“There was a perfectly good reason for 
her hurry, I suppose? Old secretary de¬ 
serted—got married-? She had good 

reason for wanting Mark in all this 
hurry?” 

Mrs. Paget and her daughters had settled 
about the fire for an hour’s delicious dis¬ 
cussion, but she interrupted it to say sooth¬ 
ingly, “It was her cousin, Dad, who’s going 
to be married, and she’s been trying to get 
hold of just the right person—she says she’s 
fearfully behindhand-” 




MOTHER 61 

“Well, you know best,” said Mr. Paget, 
departing a little discontentedly. 

Left to the dying fire, the others talked, 
yawned, made a pretence of breaking up, 
talked and yawned again. The room grew 
chilly. Bruce—oldest of the children— 
dark, undemonstrative, weary—presently 
came in, and was given the news, and mar¬ 
velled in his turn. Bruce and Margaret 
had talked of their ambitions a hundred 
times: of the day when he might enter 
college and when she might find the leisure 
and beauty in life for which her soul hun¬ 
gered. Now, as he sat with his arm about 
her, and her head on his shoulder, he said 
with generous satisfaction over and over: 

“It was coming to you, Mark; you’ve 
earned it!” 

At midnight, loitering upstairs, cold and 
yawning, Margaret kissed her mother and 
brother quietly, with whispered brief good- 
nights. But Julie, lying warm and snug in 
bed half an hour later, had a last word: 




62 


MOTHER 


“You know, Mark, I think Tm as happy 
as you are—no, I’m not generous at all! It’s 
just that it makes me feel that things do 
come your way finally, if you wait long 
enough, and that we aren’t the only family 
in town that never has anything decent 
happen to it! . . . I’ll miss you awfully, 

Mark, darling! . . . Mark, do you sup¬ 

pose Mother’d let me take this bed out, and 
just have a big couch in here? It would 
make the room seem so much bigger. And 
then I could have the girls come up here, 
don’t you know—when they came over. 
. . . Think of you—you—going abroad! 

I’d simply die! I can’t wait to tell Betty! 
. . . I hope to goodness Mother won’t 

put Beck in here! . . . We’ve had this 

room a long time together, haven’t we? 
Ever since Grandma died. Do you remem¬ 
ber her canary, that Teddy hit with a 
plate? . . . I’m going to miss you 

terribly, Mark. But we’ll write. . . 


CHAPTER III 


I N THE days that followed, the mira¬ 
cle came to be accepted by all Wes¬ 
ton, which was much excited for a 
day or two over this honor done a favorite 
daughter, and by all the Pagets—except 
Margaret. Margaret went through the 
hours in her old, quiet manner, a little more 
tender and gentle perhaps than she had 
been; but her heart never beat normally, 
and she lay awake late at night, and early 
in the morning, thinking, thinking, think¬ 
ing. She tried to realize that it was in her 
honor that a farewell tea was planned at 
the club, it was for her that her fellow- 
teachers were planning a good-bye luncheon; 
it was really she—Margaret Paget—whose 
voice said at the telephone a dozen times a 
day, “On the fourteenth.—Oh, do I? I 

63 



MOTHER 


64 

don't feel calm! Can't you try to come in 
—I do want to see you before I go!" She 
dutifully repeated Bruce's careful direc¬ 
tions; she was to give her check to an ex¬ 
pressman, and her suitcase to a red-cap; the 
expressman would probably charge fifty 
cents, the red-cap was to have no more than 
fifteen. And she was to tell the latter to 
put her into a taxicab. 

“Til remember," Margaret assured him 
gratefully, but with a sense of unreality 
pressing almost painfully upon her. One 
of a million ordinary school teachers, in a 
million little towns—and this marvel had 
befallen her! 

The night of the Pagets’ Christmas play 
came, a night full of laughter and triumph; 
and marked for Margaret by the little part- 
ing gifts that were slipped into her hands, 
and by the warm good wishes that were 
murmured, not always steadily, by this old 
friend and that. When the time came to 
distribute plates and paper napkins, and 


MOTHER 


65 

great saucers of ice cream and sliced cake, 
Margaret was toasted in cold sweet lemon¬ 
ade; and drawing close together to “har¬ 
monize” more perfectly, the circle about 
her touched their glasses while they sang, 
“For she’s a jolly good fellow.” Later, 
when the little supper was almost over, 
Ethel Elliot, leaning over to lay her hand on 
Margaret’s, began in her rich contralto: 

“When other lips and other hearts . . .” 

and as they all went seriously through the 
two verses, they stood up, one by one, and 
linked arms; the little circle, affectionate 
and admiring, that had bounded Margaret’s 
friendships until now. 

Then Christmas came, with a dark, 
freezing walk to the pine-spiced and candle- 
lighted early service in the little church, and 
a quicker walk home, chilled and happy and 
hungry, to a riotous Christmas breakfast 
and a littered breakfast table. The new 
year came, with a dance and revel, and the 


66 


MOTHER 


Pagets took one of their long tramps through 
the snowy afternoon, and came back hungry 
for a big dinner. Then there was dress¬ 
making—Mrs. Schmidt in command, Mrs. 
Paget tireless at the machine, Julie all eager 
interest. Margaret, patiently standing to 
be fitted, conscious of the icy, wet touch of 
Mrs. Schmidt’s red fingers on her bare arms, 
dreamily acquiescent as to buttons or hooks, 
was totally absent in spirit. 

A trunk came, Mr. Paget very anxious 
that the keys should not be “fooled with” 
by the children. Margaret’s mother packed 
this trunk scientifically. “No, now the 
shoes, Mark—now that heavy skirt,” she 
would say. “Run get mother some more 
tissue paper, Beck. You’ll have to leave 
the big cape, dear, and you can send for it 
if you need it. Now the blue dress, Ju. I 
think that dyed so prettily, just the thing 
for mornings. And here’s your prayer 
book in the tray, dear; if you go Saturday 
you’ll want it the first thing in the morn- 



MOTHER 67 

ing. See, I’ll put a fresh handkerchief in 
it-” 

Margaret, relaxed and idle, in a rocker, 
with Duncan in her lap busily working at 
her locket, would say over and over: 

“ You’re all such angels—I’ll never for¬ 
get it!” and wish that, knowing how sin¬ 
cerely she meant it, she could feel it a little 
more. Conversation languished in these 
days; mother and daughters feeling that 
time was too precious to waste speech of 
little things, and that their hearts were toofull 
to touch upon the great change impending. 

A night came when the Pagets went early 
upstairs, saying that, after all, it was not 
like people marrying and going to Russia; it 
was not like a real parting; it wasn’t as if 
Mark couldn’t come home again in four 
hours if anything went wrong at either end 
of the line. Margaret’s heart was beating 
high and quick now; she tried to show some 
of the love and sorrow she knew she should 
have felt, she knew that she did feel under 



68 


MOTHER 


the hurry of her blood that made speech 
impossible. She went to her mother’s door, 
slender and girlish in her white nightgown, 
to kiss her good-night again. Mrs. Paget’s 
big arms went about her daughter. Mar¬ 
garet laid her head childishly on her mother’s 
shoulder. Nothing of significance was said. 
Margaret whispered, “Mother, I love you!” 
Her mother said, “You were such a little 
thing, Mark, when I kissed you one day, 
without hugging you, and you said, ‘Please 
don’t love me just with your face, Mother, 
love me with your heart!’ ” Then she added, 
“Did you and Julie get that extra blanket 
down to-day, dear?—it’s going to be very 
cold.” Margaret nodded. “Good-night, 

little girl-” “Good-night, Mother-” 

That was the real farewell, for the next 
morning was all confusion. They dressed 
hurriedly, by chilly gas-light; clocks were 
compared, Rebecca’s back buttoned; Dun¬ 
can’s overcoat jerked on; coffee drunk 
scalding hot as they stood about the kitchen 





MOTHER 


69 

table; bread barely tasted. They walked 
to the railway station on wet sidewalks, 
under a broken sky, Bruce, with Margaret’s 
suitcase, in the lead. Weston was asleep 
in the gray morning, after the storm. Far 
and near belated cocks were crowing. 

A score of old friends met Margaret at the 
train; there were gifts, promises, good wishes. 
There came a moment when it was generally 
felt that the Pagets should be left alone, 
now—the far whistle of the train beyond 
the bridge—the beginning of good-byes—a 
sudden filling of the mother’s eyes that was 
belied by her smile.—“Good-bye, sweetest 
—don’t knock my hat off, baby dear! Beck, 
darling—Oh, Ju, do ! don’t just say it—start 
me a letter to-night! all write to me! 
Good-bye, Dad, darling—all right, Bruce, 
I’ll get right in!—good-bye! Good-bye!” 

Then for the Pagets there was a walk back 
to the empty disorder of the house: Julie 
very talkative, at her father’s side; Bruce 
walking far behind the others with his 







MOTHER 


70 

mother—and the day’s familiar routine to 
be somehow gone through without Mar¬ 
garet. 

But for Margaret, settling herself com¬ 
fortably in the grateful warmth of the train, 
and watching the uncertain early sunshine 
brighten unfamiliar fields and farmhouses, 
every brilliant possibility in life seemed to 
be waiting. She tried to read, to think, to 
pray, to stare steadily out of the window; 
she could do nothing for more than a mo¬ 
ment at a time. Her thoughts went back¬ 
ward and forward like a weaving shuttle: 
“How good they’ve all been to me! How 
grateful I am! Now if only, only , I can 
make good!” 

“ Look out for the servants! ” Julie, from 
the depth of her sixteen-years-old wisdom 
had warned her sister. “The governess 
will hate you because she’ll be afraid you’ll 
cut her out, and Mrs. Carr-Boldt’s maid 
will be a cat! They always are, in books.” 

Margaret had laughed at this advice, but 


MOTHER 


71 

in her heart she rather believed it. Her new 
work seemed so enchanting to her that it 
was not easy to believe that she did not 
stand in somebody’s light. She was glad 
that by a last-moment arrangement she was 
to arrive at the Grand Central Station at 
almost the same moment as Mrs. Carr- 
Boldt herself, who was coming home from a 
three-weeks’ visit in the Middle West. Mar¬ 
garet gave only half her attention to the 
flying country that was beginning to shape 
itself into streets and rows of houses; all the 
last half-hour of the trip was clouded by the 
nervous fear that she would somehow fail to 
find Mrs. Carr-Boldt in the confusion at the 
railroad terminal. 

But happily enough the lady was found 
without trouble, or rather Margaret was 
found, felt an authoritative tap on her 
shoulder, caught a breath of fresh violets 
and a glimpse of her patron’s clear-skinned, 
resolute face. They whirled through wet, 
deserted streets; Mrs. Carr-Boldt gracious 


MOTHER 


72 

and talkative, Margaret nervously inter¬ 
ested and amused. 

Their wheels presently grated against a 
curb, a man in livery opened the limousine 
door. Margaret saw an immense stone 
mansion facing the park, climbed a dazzling 
flight of wide steps, and was in a great hall 
that faced an interior court, where there 
were Florentine marble benches, and the 
great lifted leaves of palms. She was a 
little dazed by crowded impressions: im¬ 
pressions of height and spaciousness and 
richness, and opening vistas; a great marble 
stairway, and a landing where there was an 
immense designed window in clear leaded 
glass; rugs, tapestries, mirrors, polished 
wood and great chairs with brocaded seats 
and carved dark backs. Two little girls, 
heavy, well-groomed little girls—one spec¬ 
tacled and good-natured looking, the other 
rather pretty, with a mass of fair hair— 
were coming down the stairs with an eager 
little German woman. They kissed their 



MOTHER 


73 

mother, much diverted by the mad rushes 
and leaps of the two white poodles who 
accompanied them. 

“These are my babies, Miss Paget,” said 
Mrs. Carr-Boldt. “This is Victoria, who’s 
eleven, and Harriet, who’s six. And these 
are Monsieur-” 

“ Monsieur Patou and Monsieur Mouche,” 
said Victoria, introducing the dogs with en¬ 
tire ease of manner. The German woman 
said something forcibly, and Margaret un¬ 
derstood the child’s reply in that tongue: 
“Mamma won’t blame you, Fraulein; Har¬ 
riet and I wished them to come down!” 

Presently they all went up in a luxu¬ 
riously fitted little lift, Margaret being car¬ 
ried to the fourth floor to her own rooms, 
to which a little maid escorted her. 

When the maid had gone Margaret 
walked to the door and tried it, for no rea¬ 
son whatever; it was shut. Her heart was 
beating violently. She walked into the 
middle of the room and looked at herself 



MOTHER 


74 

in the mirror, and laughed a little breath¬ 
less laugh. Then she took off her hat care¬ 
fully and went into the bedroom that was 
beyond her sitting-room, and hung her hat 
in a fragrant white closet that was entirely 
and delightfully empty, and put her coat on 
a hanger, and her gloves and bag in the 
empty big top drawer of a great mahogany 
bureau. Then she went back to the mirror 
and looked hard at her own beauty re¬ 
flected in it; and laughed her little laugh 
again. 

“It's too good—it’s too much!” she whis¬ 
pered. 

She investigated her domain, after quell¬ 
ing a wild desire to sit down at the beauti¬ 
ful desk and try the new pens, the crystal 
ink-well, and the heavy paper, with its 
severely engraved address, in a long letter 
to Mother. 

There was a tiny upright piano in the 
sitting-room, and at the fireplace a deep 
thick rug, and an immense leather arm- 


MOTHER 


75 

chair. A clock in crystal and gold flanked 
by two crystal candlesticks had the centre of 
the mantelpiece. On the little round ma¬ 
hogany centre table was a lamp with a won¬ 
derful mosaic shade; a little bookcase was 
filled with books and magazines. Mar¬ 
garet went to one of the three windows, and 
looked down upon the bare trees and the 
snow in the park, and upon the rumbling 
green omnibuses, all bathed in bright chilly 
sunlight. 

A mahogany door with a crystal knob 
opened into the bedroom, where there was a 
polished floor, and more rugs, and a gay 
rosy wall paper, and a great bed with a lace 
cover. Beyond was a bathroom, all enamel, 
marble, glass, and nickel-plate, with heavy 
monogrammed towels on the rack, three 
new little wash-cloths sealed in glazed paper, 
three new toothbrushes in paper cases, and 
a cake of famous English soap just out of 
its wrapper. 

Over the whole little suite there brooded 


MOTHER 


76 

an exquisite order. Not a particle of dust 
broke the shining surfaces of the mahogany, 
not a fallen leaf lay under the great bowl 
of roses on the desk. Now and then the 
radiator clanked in the stillness; it was hard 
to believe in that warmth and silence that a 
cold winter wind was blowing outside, and 
that snow still lay on the ground. 

Margaret, resting luxuriously in the big 
chair, became thoughtful; presently she 
went into the bedroom, and knelt down 
beside the bed. 

“O Lord, let me stay here,” she prayed, 
her face in her hands. “ I want so to stay— 
make me a success!” 

Never was a prayer more generously 
answered. Miss Paget was an instant suc¬ 
cess. In something less than two months 
she became indispensable to Mrs. Carr- 
Boldt, and was a favorite with every one, 
from the rather stolid, silent head of the 
house down to the least of the maids. She 


MOTHER 


85 

“Oh, no, we don’t, Mother,” Margaret 
said quickly. “Who are the Carr-Boldts, 
except for their money? Why, Mrs. Car¬ 
teret—for all her family!—isn’t half the 
aristocrat Grandma was! And you—you 
could be a Daughter of The Officers of the 
Revolution, Mother!” 

“Why, Mark, I never heard that!” her 
mother protested, cleaning the sprinkler 
with a hairpin. 

“Mother!” Julie said eagerly, “Great¬ 
grandfather Quincy!” 

“Oh, Grandpa,” said Mrs. Paget. “Yes, 
Grandpa was a paymaster. He was on 
Governor Hancock’s staff. They used to 

call him ‘Major.’ But Mark-” she 

turned off the water, holding her skirts 
away from the combination of mud and dust 
underfoot, “that’s a very silly way to talk, 
dear! Money does make a difference; it 
does no good to go back into the past and 
say that this one was a judge and that one a 
major; we must live our lives where we are ! ” 





86 


MOTHER 


Margaret had not lost a wholesome respect 
for her mother’s opinion in the two years she 
had been away, but she had lived in a very 
different world, and was full of new ideas. 

“Mother, do you mean to tell me that if 
you and Dad hadn’t had a perfect pack of 
children, and moved so much, and if Dad— 
say—had been in that oil deal that he said 
he wished he had the money for, and we 
still lived in the brick house, that you 
wouldn’t be in every way the equal of Mrs. 
Carr-Boldt ?” 

“If you mean as far as money goes, Mark 
—no. We might have been well-to-do as 
country people go, I suppose-” 

“Exactly!” said Margaret; “and you 
would have been as well off as dozens of the 
people who are going about in society this 
minute! It’s the merest chance that we 
aren’t rich. Just for instance: father’s 
father had twelve children, didn’t he?—and 
left them—how much was it ?—about three 
thousand dollars apiece-” 






MOTHER 87 

'‘And a Grodsend it was, too,” said her 
mother, reflectively. 

“But suppose Dad had been the only 
child, Mother,” Margaret persisted, “he 
would have had-” 

“He would have had the whole thirty-six 
thousand dollars, I suppose, Mark.” 

“Or more,” said Margaret, “for Grand¬ 
father Paget was presumably spending 
money on them all the time.” 

“Well, but Mark,” said Mrs. Paget, 
laughing as at the vagaries of a small child, 
“Father Paget did have twelve children— 
and Daddy and I eight—” she sighed, as 
always, at the thought of the little son who 
was gone—“and there you are! You can’t 
get away from that, dear.” * 

Margaret did not answer. But she thought 
to herself that very few people held Mother’s 
views of this subject. 

Mrs. Carr-Boldt’s friends, for example, 
did not accept increasing cares in this re¬ 
signed fashion; their lives were ideally 




88 


MOTHER 


pleasant and harmonious without the com¬ 
plicated responsibilities of large families. 
They drifted from season to season without 
care, always free, always gay, always ir¬ 
reproachably gowned. In winter there were 
daily meetings, for shopping, for luncheon, 
bridge, or tea; summer was filled with a 
score of country visits. There were motor- 
trips for week-ends, dinners, theatre, and 
the opera to fill the evenings, German or 
singing lessons, manicure, masseuse, and 
dressmaker to crowd the morning hours all 
the year round. Margaret learned from 
these exquisite, fragrant creatures the art 
of being perpetually fresh and charming, 
learned their methods of caring for their 
own beauty, learned to love rare toilet 
waters and powders, fine embroidered linen 
and silk stockings. There was no particular 
strain upon her wardrobe now, nor upon 
her purse; she could be as dainty as she 
liked. She listened to the conversations 
that went on about her—sometimes critical 


MOTHER 


89 

or unconvinced; more often admiring; and 
as she listened she found slowly but cer¬ 
tainly her own viewpoint. She was not 
mercenary. She would not marry a man 
just for his money, she decided, but just as 
certainly she would not marry a man who 
could not give her a comfortable establish¬ 
ment, a position in society. 

The man seemed in no hurry to appear; 
as a matter of fact, the men whom Margaret 
met were openly anxious to evade marriage, 
even with the wealthy girls of their own set. 
Margaret was not concerned; she was too 
happy to miss the love-making element; 
the men she saw were not of a type to inspire 
a sensible, busy, happy girl with any very 
deep feeling. And it was with generous 
and perfect satisfaction that she presently 
had news of Julie's happy engagement. 
Julie was to marry a young and popular 
doctor, the only child of one of Weston's 
most prominent families. The little sister’s 
letter bubbled joyously with news. 


MOTHER 


90 

“Harry’s father is going to build us a 
little house on the big place, the darling,” 
wrote Julie; “and we will stay with them 
until it is done. But in five years Harry 
says we will have a real honeymoon, in 
Europe! Think of going to Europe as a 
married woman. Mark, I wish you could 
see my ring; it is a beauty , but don’t tell 
Mother I was silly enough to write about 
it!” 

Margaret delightedly selected a little 
collection of things for Julie’s trousseau. A 
pair of silk stockings, a scarf she never had 
worn, a lace petticoat, pink silk for a waist. 
Mrs. Carr-Boldt, coming in in the midst of 
these preparations, insisted upon adding so 
many other things, from trunks and closets, 
that Margaret was speechless with delight. 
Scarves, cobwebby silks in uncut lengths, 
embroidered lingerie still in the tissue paper 
of Paris shops, parasols, gloves, and lengths 
of lace—she piled all of them into Mar¬ 
garet’s arms. Julie’s trousseau was conse- 





MOTHER 


9i 


quently quite the most beautiful Weston 
had ever seen; and the little sister’s cloud¬ 
less joy made the fortnight Margaret spent 
at home at the time of the wedding a very 
happy one. It was a time of rush and 
flurry, laughter and tears, of roses, and girls 
in white gowns. But some ten days before 
the wedding Julie and Margaret happened 
to be alone for a peaceful hour over their 
sewing, and fell to talking seriously. 

“You see, our house will be small,” said 
Julie; “but I don’t care—we don’t intend 
to stay in Weston all our lives. Don’t 
breathe this to any one, Mark, but if Harry 
does as well as he’s doing now for two years, 
we’ll rent the little house, and we’re going 
to Baltimore for a year for a special course. 
Then—you know he’s devoted to Doctor 
McKim, he always calls him ‘the chief’— 
then he thinks maybe McKim will work 
him into his practice—he’s getting old, you 
know, and that means New York!” 

“Oh, Ju —really /” 


92 


MOTHER 


“I don’t see why not/’ Julie said, dim¬ 
pling. “ Harry’s crazy to do it. He says 
he doesn’t propose to live and die in Weston. 
McKim could throw any amount of hospital 
practice his way, to begin with. And you 
know Harry’ll have something—and the 
house will rent. I’m crazy,” said Julie, 
enthusiastically, “to take one of those lovely 
old apartments on Washington Square, and 
meet a few nice people, you know, and really 
make something of my life!” 

“Mrs. Carr-Boldt and I will spin down 
for you every few days,” Margaret said, 
falling readily in with the plan. “Fm glad 
you’re not going to simply get into a rut the 
way some of the other girls have, cooking 
and babies and nothing else!” she said. 

“I think that’s an awful mistake,” Julie 
said placidly. “Starting in right is so im¬ 
portant. I don’t want to be a mere drudge 
like Ethel or Louise—they may like it. I 
don’t! Of course, this isn’t a matter to talk 
of,” she went on, coloring a little. “I’d 



MOTHER 


93 

never breathe this to Mother! But it’s 
perfectly absurd to pretend that girls don’t 
discuss these things. IVe talked to Betty 
and Louise—we all talk about it, you know. 
And Louise says they haven’t had one free 
second since Buddy came. She can’t keep 
one maid, and she says the idea of two maids 
eating their three meals a day, whether 
she’s home or not, makes her perfectly 
sick! Some one’s got to be with him every 
single second, even now, when he’s four- 
to see that he doesn’t fall off something or 
put things in his mouth. And as Louise 
says—it means no more week-end trips; 
you can’t go visiting overnight, you can’t 
even go for a day’s drive or a day on the 
beach, without extra clothes for the baby, 
a mosquito-net and an umbrella for the 
baby—milk packed in ice for the baby— 
somebody trying to get the baby to take his 
nap—it’s awful! It would end our Balti¬ 
more plan, and that means New York, and 
New York means everything to Harry and 




94 


MOTHER 


me!” finished Julie, contentedly, flattening 
a finished bit of embroidery on her knee, and 
regarding it complacently. 

“Well, I think you’re right,” Margaret 
approved. “Things are different now from 
what they were in Mother’s day.” 

“And look at Mother,” Julie said. “One 
long slavery! Life’s too short to wear 
yourself out that way!” 

Mrs. Paget’s sunny cheerfulness was 
sadly shaken when the actual moment of 
parting with the exquisite, rose-hatted, 
gray-frocked Julie came; her face worked 
pitifully in its effort to smile; her tall figure, 
awkward in an ill-made, unbecoming new 
silk, seemed to droop tenderly over the little 
clinging wife. Margaret, stirred by the 
sight of tears on her mother’s face, stood with 
an arm about her, when the bride and groom 
drove away in the afternoon sunshine. 

“I’m going to stay with you until she 
gets back!” she reminded her mother. 


MOTHER 


95 

“And you know you’ve always said you 
wanted the girls to marry, Mother,” urged 
Mr. Paget. Rebecca felt this a felicitous 
moment to ask if she and the boys could 
have the rest of the ice cream. 

“Divide it evenly,” said Mrs. Paget, wip¬ 
ing her eyes and smiling. “Yes, I know, 
Daddy dear, I’m an ungrateful woman! I 
suppose your turn will come next, Mark, and 
then I don’t know what I will do!” 


CHAPTER IV 


B UT Margaret’s turn did not come for 
nearly a year. Then—in Germany 
again, and lingering at a great 
Berlin hotel because the spring was so beau¬ 
tiful, and the city so sweet with linden 
bloom, and especially because there were 
two Americans at the hotel whose game of 
bridge it pleased Mr. and Mrs. Carr-Boldt 
daily to hope they could match—then Mar¬ 
garet transformed within a few hours from 
a merely pretty, very dignified, perfectly 
contented secretary, entirely satisfied with 
what she wore as long as it was suitable 
and fresh, into a living woman whose 
cheeks paled and flushed at nothing but 
her thoughts, who laughed at herself in 
her mirror, loitered over her toilet try¬ 
ing one gown after another, and walked 

96 



MOTHER 97 

half-smiling through a succession of rosy 
dreams. 

It all came about very simply. One of 
the aforementioned bridge players won¬ 
dered if Mrs. Carr-Boldt and her niece— 
oh, wasn’t it?—her secretary then—would 
like to hear a very interesting young Amer¬ 
ican professor lecture this morning?—won¬ 
dered, when they were fanning themselves 
in the airy lecture-room, if they would care 
to meet Professor Tenison? 

Margaret looked into a pair of keen, 
humorous eyes, answered with her own smile 
Professor Tenison’s sudden charming one, 
lost her small hand in his big firm one. 
Then she listened to him talk, as he strode 
about the platform, boyishly shaking back 
the hair that fell across his forehead. After 
that he walked to the hotel with them, 
through dazzling seas of perfume, and of 
flowers, under the enchanted shifting green 
of great trees—or so Margaret thought. 
There was a plunge from the hot street into 






MOTHER 


98 

the awninged cool gloom of the hotel, and 
then a luncheon, when the happy steady 
murmur from their own table seemed echoed 
by the murmurous clink and stir and 
laughter all about them, and accented by the 
not-too-close music from the band. 

Doctor Tenison was everything charm¬ 
ing, Margaret thought, instantly drawn by 
the unaffected, friendly manner, and watch¬ 
ing the interested gleam of his blue eyes and 
the white flash of his teeth. He was a 
gentleman, to begin with; distinguished at 
thirty-two in his chosen work; big and well- 
built, without suggesting the athlete, of an 
old and honored American family, and the 
only son of a rich—and eccentric—old doc¬ 
tor whom Mrs. Carr-Boldt chanced to know. 

He was frankly delighted at the chance 
that had brought him in contact with these 
charming people; and as Mrs. Carr-Boldt 
took an instant fancy to him, and as he was 
staying at their own hotel, they saw him 
after that every day, and several times a 




MOTHER 


99 


day. Margaret would come down the great 
sun-bathed stairway in the morning to find 
him patiently waiting in a porch chair. 
Her 'heart would give a great leap—half 
joy, half new strange pain, as she recognized 
him. There would be time for a chat over 
their fruit and eggs before Mr. Carr-Boldt 
came down, all ready for a motor-trip, or 
Mrs. Carr-Boldt, swathed in cream-colored 
coat and flying veils, joined them with an 
approving “Good-morning.” • 

Margaret would remember these break¬ 
fasts all her life: the sun-splashed little 
table in a corner of the great dining-room, 
the rosy fatherly waiter who was so much 
delighted with her German, the busy pic¬ 
turesque traffic in the street just below the 
wide-open window. She would always re¬ 
member a certain filmy silk striped gown, a 
wide hat loaded with daisies; always love 
the odor of linden trees in the spring. 

Sometimes the professor went with them 
on their morning drive, to be dropped at the 


IOO 


MOTHER 


lecture-hall with Margaret and Mrs. Carr- 
Boldt. The latter was pleased to take the 
course of lectures very seriously, and carried 
a handsome Russian leather note-book, and 
a gold pencil. Sometimes after luncheon 
they all went on an expedition together, and 
now and then Margaret and Doctor Tenison 
went off alone on foot, to explore the city. 
They would end the afternoon with coffee 
and little cakes in some tea-room, and come 
home tired and merry in the long shadows of 
the spring sunset, with wilted flowers from 
the street markets in their hands. 

There was one glorious tramp in the rain, 
when the professor’s great laugh rang out 
like a boy’s for sheer high spirits, and when 
Margaret was an enchanting vision in her 
long coat, with her cheeks glowing through 
the blown wet tendrils of her hair. That 
day they had tea in the deserted charming 
little parlor of a tiny inn, and drank it toast¬ 
ing their feet over a glowing fire. 

“Is Mrs. Carr-Boldt your mother’s or 





MOTHER 


IOI 


your father’s sister?” John Tenison asked, 
watching his companion with approval. 

“Oh, good gracious!” said Margaret, 
laughing over her teacup. “Haven’t I told 
you yet that I’m only her secretary ? I never 
saw Mrs. Carr-Boldt until five years ago.” 

“Perhaps you did tell me. But I got it 
into my head, that first day, that you were 
aunt and niece-” 

“People do, I think,” Margaret said 
thoughtfully, “because we’re both fair.” 
She did not say that but for Mrs. Carr- 
Boldt’s invaluable maid the likeness would 
have been less marked, on this score at 
least. “I taught school,” she went on 
simply, “and Mrs. Carr-Boldt happened 
to come to my school, and she asked me to 
come to her.” 

“You’re all alone in the world, Miss 
Paget?” He was eying her musingly; the 
direct question came quite naturally. 

“Oh, dear me, no! My father and mother 
are living”; and feeling, as she always did, 



102 


MOTHER 


a little claim on her loyalty, she added: 
“We are, or were, rather, Southern people 
—but my father settled in a very small New 
York town-” 

“Mrs. Carr-Boldt told me that—I’d for¬ 
gotten-” said Professor Tenison, and he 

carried the matter entirely out of Margar¬ 
et’s hands—much, much further indeed 
than she would have carried it, by contin¬ 
uing, “She tells me that Quincyport was 
named for your mother’s grandfather, and 
that Judge Paget was your father’s father.” 

“Father’s uncle,” Margaret corrected, 
although as a matter of fact Judge Paget 
had been no nearer than her father’s second 
cousin. “But father always called him 
uncle,” Margaret assured herself inwardly. 
To the Quincyport claim she said nothing. 
Quincyport was in the county that Mother’s 
people had come from; Quincy was a very 
unusual name, and the original Quincy had 
been a Charles, which certainly was one of 
Mother’s family names. Margaret and 




MOTHER 


103 

Julie, browsing about among the colonial 
histories and genealogies of the Weston Pub¬ 
lic Library years before, had come to a 
jubilant certainty that Mother's grand¬ 
father must have been the same man. But 
she did not feel quite so positive now. 

“Your people aren't still in the South, 
you said?” 

“Oh, no!” Margaret cleared her throat. 
“They're in Weston—Weston, New York.” 

“ Weston! Not near Dayton?” 

“Why, yes! Do you know Dayton?” 

“Do I know Dayton?” He was like an 
eager child. “Why, my Aunt Pamela lives 
there; the only mother I ever knew! I 
knew Weston, too, a little. Lovely homes 
there, some of them—old colonial houses. 
And your mother lives there? Is she fond 
of flowers?” 

“She loves them,” Margaret said, vaguely 
uncomfortable. 

“Well, she must know Aunt Pamela,” 
said John Tenison, enthusiastically. “I 


MOTHER 


104 

expect they’d be great friends. And you 
must know Aunt Pam. She’s like a dainty 
old piece of china, or a—I don’t know, a 
tea rose! She’s never married, and she 
lives in the most charming brick house, 
with brick walls and hollyhocks all about 
it, and such an atmosphere inside! She 
has an old maid and an old gardener, and 
—don’t you know—she’s the sort of woman 
who likes to sit down under a portrait of 
your great-grandfather, in a dim parlor full 
of mahogany and rose jars, with her black 
silk skirts spreading about her, and an Old 
Blue cup in her hand, and talk family—how 
cousin this married a man whose people 
aren’t anybody, and cousin that is outraging 
precedent by naming her child for her 
husband’s side of the house. She’s a funny, 
dear old lady! You know, Miss Paget,’ 1 
the professor went on, with his eager, im¬ 
personal air, “when I met you, I thought you 
didn’t quite seem like a New Yorker and a 
Bar Harborer—if that’s the word! Aunt 


MOTHER 


105 

Pam—you know she’s my only mother, I got 
all my early knowledge from her!—Aunt 
Pam detests the usual New York girl, and 
the minute I met you I knew she’d like you. 
You’d sort of fit into the Dayton picture, 
with your braids, and those ruffly things you 

1 >> 

wear! 

Margaret said simply, “I would love to 
meet her,” and began slowly to draw on her 
gloves. It surely was not requisite that 
she should add, “ But you must not confuse 
my home with any such exquisitely ordered 
existence as that. We are poor people, 
our house is crowded, our days a severe and 
endless struggle with the ugly things of life. 
We have good blood in our veins, but not 
more than hundreds of thousands of other 
American families. My mother would not 
understand one tenth of your aunt’s con¬ 
versation; your aunt would find very un¬ 
interesting the things that are vital to my 
mother.” 

No, she couldn’t say that. She picked 



io6 


MOTHER 


up her dashing little hat, and pinned it 
over her loosened soft mass of yellow hair, 
and buttoned up her storm coat, and 
plunged her hands deep in her pockets. 
No, the professor would call on her at 
Bar Harbor, take a yachting trip with the 
Carr-Boldts perhaps, and then—and then, 
when they were really good friends, some 
day she would ask Mother to have a simple 
little luncheon, and Mrs. Carr-Boldt would 
let her bring Doctor Tenison down in the 
motor from New York. And meantime—no 
need to be too explicit. 

For just two happy weeks Margaret 
lived in Wonderland. The fourteen days 
were a revelation to her. Life seemed to 
grow warmer, more rosy-colored. Little 
things became significant; every moment 
carried its freight of joy. Her beauty, 
always notable, became almost startling; 
there was a new glow in her cheeks and lips, 
new fire in the dark-lashed eyes that were 
so charming a contrast to her bright hair. 


MOTHER 


107 

Like a pair of joyous and irresponsible 
children she and John Tenison walked 
through the days, too happy ever to pause 
and ask themselves whither they were going. 

Then abruptly it ended. Victoria, brought 
down from school in Switzerland with 
various indications of something wrong, was 
in a flash a sick child; a child who must be 
hurried home to the only surgeon in whom 
Mrs. Carr-Boldt placed the least trust. 
There was hurried packing, telephoning, 
wiring; it was only a few hours after the 
great German physician’s diagnosis that 
they were all at the railway station, breath¬ 
less, nervous, eager to get started. 

Doctor Tenison accompanied them to the 
station, and in the five minutes’ wait before 
their train left, a little incident occurred, 
the memory of which clouded Margaret’s 
dreams for many a day to come. Arriving, 
as they were departing, were the St. George 
Allens, noisy, rich, arrogant New Yorkers, 
for whom Margaret had a special dislike. 


io8 


MOTHER 


The Allens fell joyously upon the Carr- 
Boldt party, with a confusion of greetings. 
“And Jack Tenison!” shouted Lily Allen, 
delightedly. “Well, what fun! What are 
you doing here?” 

“I’m feeling a little lonely,” said the 
professor, smiling at Mrs. Carr-Boldt. 

“Nothing like that; unsay them woyds,” 
said Maude Allen, cheerfully. “Mamma, 
make him dine with us! Say you will.” 

“I assure you I was dreading the lonely 
evening,” John Tenison said gratefully. 
Margaret’s last glimpse of his face was be¬ 
tween Lily’s pink and cherry hat and 
Maude’s astonishing headgear of yellow 
straw, gold braid, spangled quills, and calla 
lilies. She carried a secret heartache through 
the worried fortnight of Victoria’s illness 
and the busy days that followed; for Mrs. 
Carr-Boldt had one of many nervous break¬ 
downs, and took her turn at the hospital 
when Victoria came home. For the first 
time in five happy years Margaret drooped, 


MOTHER 


109 


and for the first time a longing for money 
and power of her own gnawed at the girl’s 
heart. If she had but her share of these 
things, she could hold her own against a 
hundred Maude and Lily Allens. 

As it was, she told herself a little bitterly, 
she was only a secretary, one of the hundred 
paid dependents of a rich woman. She was 
only, after all, a little middle-class country 
school teacher. 


CHAPTER V 

S O YOU’RE going home to your 
own people for the week-end, Peggy? 
And how many of you are there, 
I always forget?” said young Mrs. George 
Crawford, negligently. She tipped back in 
her chair, half shut her novel, half shut her 
eyes, and looked critically at her finger¬ 
nails. 

Outside the big country house summer 
sunshine flooded the smooth lawns, sparkled 
on the falling diamonds and still pool of the 
fountain, glowed over acres of matchless 
wood and garden. But deep awnings made 
a clear cool shade indoors, and the wide 
rooms were delightfully breezy. 

Margaret, busy with a ledger and cheque¬ 
book, smiled absently, finished a long column, 
made an orderly entry, and wiped her pen. 


IIO 


MOTHER 


hi 


“Seven,” said she, smiling. 

“Seven!” echoed Mrs. Potter, lazily. 
“My heaven—seven children! How early 
Victorian!” 

“Isn’t it?” said a third woman, a very 
beautiful woman, Mrs. Watts Watson, who 
was also idling and reading in the white-and- 
gray morning-room. “Well,” she added, 
dropping her magazine, and locking her 
hands about her head, “my grandmother had 
ten. Fancy trying to raise ten children!” 

“Oh, everything’s different now,” the 
first speaker said indifferently. “Every¬ 
thing’s more expensive, life is more com¬ 
plicated. People used to have roomier 
houses, aunts and cousins and grandmothers 
living with them; there was always some 
one at home with the children. Nowadays 
we don’t do that.” 

“And thank the saints we don’t!” said 
Mrs. Watson, piously. “If there’s one 
thing I cant stand, it’s a houseful of things- 
in-law!” 


11 2 


MOTHER 


“Of course; but I mean it made the family 
problem simpler,” Mrs. Crawford pursued. 
“Oh—and I don’t know! Everything was 
so simple. All this business of sterilizing, 
and fumigating, and pasteurizing, and vac¬ 
cinating, and boiling in boracic acid wasn’t 
done in those days,” she finished vaguely. 

“Now there you are—now there you are!” 
said Mrs. Carr-Boldt, entering into the 
conversation with sudden force. Entirely 
recovered after her nervous collapse, as 
brisk as ever in her crisp linen gown, she 
was signing the cheques that Margaret 
handed her, frowningly busy and absorbed 
with her accounts. Now she leaned back 
in her chair, glanced at the watch at her 
wrist, and relaxed the cramped muscles of 
her body. “That’s exactly it, Rose,” said 
she to Mrs. Crawford. “Life is more com¬ 
plicated. People—the very people who 
ought to have children—simply cannot 
afford it! And who’s to blame? Can you 
blame a woman whose life is packed full of 





MOTHER 


113 

other things she simply cannot avoid, if she 

declines to complicate things any further? 

Our grandmothers didn’t have telephones, 

or motor-cars, or week-end affairs, or 

even—for that matter—manicures and 
% 

hair-dressers! A good heavy silk was full 
dress all the year ’round. They washed 
their own hair. The ‘ upstairs girl ’ answered 
the door-bell—why, they didn’t even have 
talcum powder and nursery refrigerators, 
and sanitary rugs that have to be washed 
every day! Do you suppose my grand¬ 
mother ever took a baby’s temperature, or 
had its eyes and nose examined, or its ade¬ 
noids cut? They had more children, and 
they lost more children—without any reason 
or logic whatever. Poor things, they never 
thought of doing anything else, I suppose! 
A fat old darky nurse brought up the whole 
crowd—it makes one shudder to think of 
it! Why, I had always a trained nurse, and 
the regular nurse used to take two baths a 
day. I insisted on that , and both nurseries 




MOTHER 


1 14 

were washed out every day with chloride of 
potash solution, and the iron beds washed 
every week! And even then Vic had this 
mastoid trouble, and Harriet got every¬ 
thing, almost/’ 

“Exactly,” said Mrs. Watson. “That’s 
you, Hattie, with all the money in the world. 
Now do you wonder that some of the rest 
of us, who have to think of money—in 
short,” she finished decidedly, “do you 
wonder that people are not having children ? 
At first, naturally, one doesn’t want them— 
for three or four years, I’m sure, the thought 
doesn’t come into one’s head. But then, 
afterward—you see, I’ve been married fif¬ 
teen years now!—afterward, I think it would 
be awfully nice to have one or two little 
kiddies, if it was a possible thing. But it 
isn’t.” 

“No, it isn’t,” Mrs. Crawford agreed. 
“You don’t want to have them unless you’re 
able to do everything in the world for them. 
If I were Hat here, I’d have a dozen.” 



MOTHER 


US 

“Oh, no, you wouldn’t/’ Mrs. Carr-Boldt 
assured her promptly. “No, you wouldn’t! 
You can’t leave everything to servants—• 
there are clothes to think of, and dentists, 
and special teachers, and it’s frightfully 
hard to get a nursery governess. And then 
you’ve got to see that they know the right 
people—don’t you know?—and give them 
parties—I tell you it’s a strain .” 

“Well, I don’t believe my mother with 
her seven ever worked any harder than you 
do!” said Margaret, with the admiration 
in her eyes that was so sweet to the older 
woman. “Look at this morning—did you 
sit down before you came in here twenty 
minutes ago?” 

“I? Indeed I didn’t!” Mrs. Carr-Boldt 
said. “I had my breakfast and letters at 
seven, bath at eight, straightened out that 
squabble between Swann and the cook—I 
think Paul is still simmering, but that’s 
neither here nor there!—then I went down 
with the vet to see the mare. Joe’ll never 






n6 


MOTHER 


forgive me if Eve really broken the crea¬ 
ture’s knees!—then I telephoned mother, 
and saw Harriet’s violin man, and talked 
to that Italian Joe sent up to clean the oils— 
he’s in the gallery now, and—let’s see-” 

“Italian lesson,” Margaret prompted. 

“Italian lesson,” the other echoed, “and 
then came in here to sign my cheques.” 

“You’re so executive, Harriet!” said 
Mrs. Crawford, languidly. 

“Apropos of Swann,” Margaret said, “he 
confided to me that he has seven children— 
on a little farm down on Long Island.” 

“The butler—oh, I dare say!” Mrs. Wat¬ 
son agreed. “They can, because they’ve 
* 

no standard to maintain—seven, or seven¬ 
teen—the only difference in expense is the 
actual amount of bread and butter con¬ 
sumed.” 

“It’s too bad,” said Mrs. Crawford. 
“But you’ve got to handle the question 
sanely and reasonably, like any other. 
Now, I love children,” she went on. “I’m 







MOTHER 


ii 7 

perfectly crazy about my sister’s little girl. 
She’s eleven now, and the cutest thing alive. 
But when I think of all Mabel’s been 
through, since she was born—I realize that 
it’s a little too much to expect of any woman. 
Now, look at us—there are thousands of 
people fixed as we are. We’re in an apart¬ 
ment hotel, with one maid. There’s no 
room for a second maid, no porch and no 
backyard. Well, the baby comes—one 
loses, before and after the event, just about 
six months of everything , and of course the 
expense is frightful, but no matter!—the 
baby comes. We take a house. That 
means three indoor maids, George’s chauf¬ 
feur, a man for lawn and furnace—that’s 
five-” 

“Doubling expenses,” said Mrs. Carr- 
Boldt, thoughtfully. 

“Doubling-! Trebling , or more. But 

that’s not all. Baby must be out from 
eleven to three every day. So you’ve got 
to go sit by the carriage in the park while 









11 8 


MOTHER 


nurse goes home for her lunch. Or, if 
you’re out for luncheon, or giving a lunch¬ 
eon, she brings baby home, bumps the car¬ 
riage into the basement, carries the baby 
upstairs, eats her lunch in snatches—the 
maids don’t like it, and I don’t blame them! 
I know how it was with Mabel; she had to 
give up that wonderful old apartment of 
theirs on Gramercy Park. Sid had his 
studio on the top floor, and she had such a 
lovely flat on the next floor, but there was no 
lift, and no laundry, and the kitchen was 
small—a baby takes so much fussing! And 
then she lost that splendid cook of hers, 
Germaine. She wouldn’t stand it. Up to 
that time she’d been cooking and waiting, 
too, but the baby ended that. Mabel took 
a house, and Sid paid studio rent besides, and 
they had two maids, and then three maids— 
and what with their fighting, and their days 
off, and eternally changing, Mabel was a 
wreck. I’ve seen her trying to play a bridge 
hand with Dorothy bobbing about on her 




MOTHER 


119 

arm—poor girl! Finally they went to a 
hotel, and of course the child got older, and 
was less trouble. But to this day Mabel 
doesn’t dare leave her alone for one second. 
And when they go out to dinner, and leave 
her alone in the hotel, of course the child 


“ That’s the worst of a kiddie,” Mrs. 
Watson said. “You can’t ever turn ’em 
off, as it were, or make it spades! They’re 
always right on the job. I’ll never forget 
Elsie Clay. She was the best friend I had 
—my bridesmaid, too. She married, and 
after a while they took a house in Jersey 
because of the baby. I went out there to 
lunch one day. There she was in a house 
perfectly buried in trees, with the rain sop¬ 
ping down outside, and smoke blowing out 
of the fireplace, and the drawing-room as 
dark as pitch at two o’clock. Elsie said 
she used to nearly die of loneliness, sitting 
there all afternoon long listening to the 
trains whistling, and the maid thumping 



120 


MOTHER 


irons in the kitchen, and picking up the 
baby’s blocks. And they quarrelled, you 
know, she and her husband—that was the 
beginning of the trouble. Finally the boy 
went to his grandmother, and now I believe 
Elsie’s married again, and living in Cali¬ 
fornia somewhere.” 

Margaret, hanging over the back of her 
chair, was an attentive listener. 

“But people—people in town have chil¬ 
dren!” she said. “The Blankenships have 
one, and haven’t the de Normandys?” 

“The Blankenship boy is in college,” said 
Mrs. Carr-Boldt; “and the little de Nor¬ 
mandys lived with their grandmother until 
they were old enough for boarding-school.” 

“Well, the Deanes have three!” Mar¬ 
garet said triumphantly. 

“Ah, well, my dear! Harry Deane’s a 
rich man, and she was a Pell of Philadel¬ 
phia,” Mrs. Crawford supplied promptly. 
“ Now the Eastmans have three, too, with a 
trained nurse apiece.” 




MOTHER 


121 


“I see,” Margaret admitted slowly. 

“Far wiser to have none at all,” said 
Mrs. Carr-Boldt, in her decisive way, “than 
to handicap them from the start by letting 
them see other children enjoying pleasures 
and advantages they can't afford. And 
now, girls, let's stop wasting time. It's 
half-past eleven. Why can't we have a 
game of auction right here and now?” 

Margaret returned to her cheque-book 
with speed. The other two, glad to be 
aroused, heartily approved the idea. 

“Well, what does this very businesslike 
aspect imply?” Mrs. Carr-Boldt asked her 
secretary. 

“It means that I can't play cards, and 
you oughtn't,” Margaret said, laughing. 

“Oh? Why not?” 

“ Because you've lots of things to do, and 
I've got to finish these notes, and I have to sit 
with Harriet while she does her German-” 

“Where's Fraulein?” 

“Fraulein’s going to drive Vic over to 



122 


MOTHER 


the Partridges’ for luncheon, and I promised 
Swann I’d talk to him about favors and 
things for to-morrow night.” 

“Well—busy Lizzie! And what have I 
to do?” 

Margaret reached for a well-filled date- 
book. 

“You were to decide about those altera¬ 
tions, the porch and dining-room, you 
know,” said she. “There are some archi¬ 
tect’s sketches around here; the man’s going 
to be here early in the morning. You said 
you’d drive to the yacht club, to see about 
the stage for the children’s play; you were 
to stop on the way back and see old Mrs. 
McNab a moment. You wanted to write 
Mrs. Polk a note to catch the Kaiserin 
Augusta , and luncheon’s early because of 
the Kellogg bridge.” She shut the book. 
“And call Mr. Carr-Boldt at the club at 
one,” she added. 

“All that, now fancy!” said her employer, 
admiringly. 



MOTHER 


123 

She had swept some scattered magazines 
from a small table, and was now seated 
there, negligently shuffling a pack of cards 
in her fine white hands. 

“Ring, will you, Peggy?’’ said she. 

“And the boat races are to-day, and you 
dine at Oaks-in-the-Field,” Margaret sup¬ 
plemented inflexibly. 

“Yes? Well, come and beat the seven 
of clubs,” said Mrs. Carr-Boldt, spreading 
the deck for the draw. 

“Fraulein,” she said sweetly, a moment 
later, when a maid had summoned that 
worthy and earnest governess, “tell Miss 
Harriet that Mother doesn’t want her to do 
her German to-day, it’s too warm. Tell 
her that she’s to go with you and Miss 
Victoria for a drive. Thank you. And, 
Fraulein, will you telephone old Mrs. Mc- 
Nab, and say that Mrs. Carr-Boldt is lying 
down with a severe headache, and she won’t 
be able to come in this morning? Thank 
you. And, Fraulein. telephone the yacht 


MOTHER 


124 

club, will you ? And tell Mr. Mathews that 
Mrs. Carr-Boldt is indisposed and he’ll 
have to come back this afternoon. I’ll talk 
to him before the children’s races. And— 
one thing more! Will you tell Swann Miss 
Paget will see him about to-morrow’s dinner 
when she comes back from the yacht club 
to-day? And tell him to send us something 
cool to drink now. Thank you so much. 
No, shut it. Thank you. Have a nice 
drive!” 

They all drew up their chairs to the 
table. 

“You and I, Rose,” said Mrs. Watson. 
“I’m so glad you suggested this, Hattie. 
I am dying to play.” 

“It really rests me more than anything 
else,” said Mrs. Carr-Boldt. “Two spades.” 


CHAPTER VI 


A RCHERTON, a blur of flying trees 
L\ and houses, bright in the late sun- 
^ light, Pottsville, with children wad¬ 
ing and shouting, under the bridge, Hunt’s 
Crossing, then the next would be Weston 
and home. 

Margaret, beginning to gather wraps and 
small possessions together, sighed. She 
sighed partly because her head ached, partly 
because the hot trip had mussed her usual 
fresh trimness, largely because she was 
going home. 

This was August; her last trip home had 
been between Christmas and the New Year. 
She had sent a box from Germany at Easter, 
ties for the boys, silk scarves for Rebecca, 
books for Dad; and she had written Mother 
for her birthday in June, and enclosed an 


125 


126 


MOTHER 


exquisite bit of lace in the letter; but al¬ 
though Victoria’s illness had brought her to 
America nearly three months ago, it had 
somehow been impossible, she wrote them, 
to come home until now. Margaret had 
paid a great deal for the lace, as a sort of 
salve for her conscience—not that Mother 
would ever wear it! 

Here was Weston. Weston looking its 
very ugliest in the level pitiless rays of the 
afternoon sun. The town, like most of its 
inhabitants, was wilted and grimed after 
the burden and heat of the long summer day. 
Margaret carried her heavy suitcase slowly 
up Main Street. Shop windows were spot¬ 
ted and dusty, and shopkeepers, standing 
idle in their doorways, looked spotted and 
dusty, too. A cloud of flies fought and 
surged about the closely guarded door of the 
butcher shop; a delivery cart was at the 
curb, the discouraged horse switching an 
ineffectual tail. 

As Margaret passed this cart, a tall boy of 



MOTHER 


127 

fourteen came out of the shop with a bang 
of the wire-netting door, and slid a basket 
into the back of the cart. 

“Teddy!” said Margaret, irritation evi¬ 
dent in her voice in spite of herself. 

“Hello, Mark!” said her brother, de¬ 
lightedly. “Say, great to see you! Get 
in on the four-ten?” 

“Ted,” said Margaret, kissing him, as the 
Pagets always quite simply kissed each 
other when they met, “what are you driving 
Costello's cart for?” 

“Like to,” said Theodore, simply. 
“Mother doesn't care. Say, you look swell, 
Mark!” 

“What makes you want to drive this 
horrid cart, Ted?” protested Margaret. 
“What does Costello pay you?” 

“Pay me?” scowled her brother, gather¬ 
ing up the reins. “Oh, come out of it, 
Marg'ret! He doesn’t pay me anything. 
Don't you make Mother stop me, either, 
will you ?” he ended anxiously. 


128 MOTHER 

“Of course I won’t!” Margaret said im¬ 
patiently. 

“Giddap, Ruth!” said Theodore; but 
departing, he pulled up to add cheerfully, 
“Say, Dad didn’t get his raise.” 

“Did?” said Margaret, brightening. 

“Didn't!” He grinned affectionately 
upon her as with a dislocating jerk the 
cart started a ricochetting career down the 
street with that abandon known only to 
butchers’ carts. Margaret, changing her 
heavy suitcase to the rested arm, was still 
vexedly watching it, when two girls, laugh¬ 
ing in the open doorway of the express 
company’s office across the street, caught 
sight of her. One of them, a little vision of 
pink hat and ruffles, and dark eyes and hair, 
came running to join her. 

Rebecca was now sixteen, and of all the 
handsome Pagets the best to look upon. 
She was dressed according to her youthful 
lights; every separate article of her apparel 
to-day, from her rowdyish little hat to her 


MOTHER 


129 

openwork hose, represented a battle with 
Mrs. Paget’s preconceived ideas as to pro¬ 
priety in dress, with the honors largely for 
Rebecca. Rebecca had grown up, in eight 
months, her sister thought, confusedly; 
she was no longer the adorable, un-self- 
conscious tomboy who fought and skated 
and toboganned with the boys. 

“Hello, darling dear!” said Rebecca. 
“Too bad no one met you! We all thought 
you were coming on the six. Crazy about 
your suit! Here’s Maudie Pratt. You know 
Maudie, don’t you, Mark?” 

Margaret knew Maudie. Rebecca’s in¬ 
fatuation for plain, heavy-featured, com¬ 
placent Miss Pratt was a standing mystery 
in the Paget family. Margaret smiled, 
bowed. 

“I think we stumbled upon a pretty little 
secret of yours to-day, Miss Margaret,” 
said Maudie, with her best company man¬ 
ner, as they walked along. Margaret raised 
her eyebrows. “Rebel and I,” Maudie 


MOTHER 


130 

went on—Rebecca was at the age that seeks 
a piquant substitute for an unpoetical family 
name—“Rebel and I are wondering if we 
may ask you who Mr. John Tenison is?” 

John Tenison! Margaret’s heart stood 
still with a shock almost sickening, then 
beat furiously. What—how—who on earth 
had told them anything of John Tenison? 
Coloring high, she looked sharply at Re¬ 
becca. 

“Cheer up, angel,” said Rebecca, “he’s 
not dead. He sent a telegram to-day, and 
Mother opened it-” 

“Naturally,” said Margaret, concealing 
an agony of impatience, as Rebecca paused 
apologetically. 

“He’s with his aunt, at Dayton, up the 
road here,” continued Rebecca; “and wants 
you to wire him if he may come down and 
spend to-morrow here.” 

Margaret drew a relieved breath. There 
was time to turn around, at least. 

“Who is he, sis?” asked Rebecca. 






MOTHER 


131 

“Why, he’s an awfully clever professor, 
honey,” Margaret answered serenely. “We 
heard him lecture in Germany this spring, 
and met him afterward. I liked him very 
much. He’s tremendously interesting.” She 
tried to keep out of her voice the thrill 
that shook her at the mere thought of him. 
Confused pain and pleasure stirred her to 
the very heart. He wanted to come to see 
her, he must have telephoned Mrs. Carr- 
Boldt and asked to call, or he would not have 
known that she was at home this week-end 
—surely that was significant, surely that 
meant something! The thought was all 
pleasure, so great a joy and pride indeed 
that Margaret was conscious of wanting to 
lay it aside, to think of, dream of, ponder 
over, when she was alone. But, on the 
other hand, there was instantly the miser¬ 
able conviction that he mustn’t be allowed 
to come to Weston, no—no—she couldn’t 
have him see her home and her people on a 
crowded hot summer Sunday, when the 


MOTHER 


132 

town looked its ugliest, and the children 
were home from school, and when the 
scramble to get to church and to safely 
accomplish the one o’clock dinner exhausted 
the women of the family. And how could 
she keep him from coming, what excuse 
could she give ? 

“ Don’t you want him to come—is he old 
and fussy?” asked Rebecca, interestedly. 

“I’ll see,” Margaret answered vaguely. 
“No, he’s only thirty-two or four.” 

“And charming!” said Maudie archly. 
Margaret eyed her with a coolness worthy 
of Mrs. Carr-Boldt herself, and then turned 
rather pointedly to Rebecca. 

“How’s Mother, Becky?” 

“Oh, she’s fine!” Rebecca said, absently 
in her turn. When Maudie left them at 
the next corner, she said quickly: 

“Mark, did you see where we were when 
I saw you?” 

“At the express office-? Yes,” Mar¬ 

garet said, surprised. 



MOTHER 


i 33 

“Well, listen,” said Rebecca, reddening. 
“Don’t say anything to Mother about it, 
will you? She thinks those boys are fresh 
in there—she don’t like me to go in!’’ 

“Oh, Beck—then you oughtn’t!” Mar¬ 
garet protested. 

“ Well, I wasn’t! ” Rebecca said uncomfort¬ 
ably. “We went to see if Maudie’s racket 
had come. You won’t—will you, Mark?” 

“Tell Mother—no, I won’t,” Margaret 
said, with a long sigh. She looked sideways 
at Rebecca—the dainty, fast-forming little 
figure, the even ripple and curl of her plaited 
hair, the assured pose of the pretty head. 
Victoria Carr-Boldt, just Rebecca’s age, was 
a big schoolgirl still, self-conscious and 
inarticulate, her well-groomed hair in an 
unbecoming “club,” her well-hung skirts 
unbecomingly short. Margaret had half 
expected to find Rebecca at the same stage 
of development. 

Rebecca was cheerful now, the promise 
exacted, and cheerfully observed: 





MOTHER 


134 

“Dad didn’t get his raise—isn’t that the 
limit?” 

Margaret sighed again, shrugged wearily. 
They were in their own quiet side street 
now, a street lined with ugly, shabby houses 
and beautified by magnificent old elms and 
maples. The Pagets’ own particular gate 
was weather-peeled, the lawn trampled and 
bare. A bulging wire-netting door gave on 
the shabby old hall Margaret knew so well; 
she went on into the familiar rooms, acutely 
conscious, as she always was for the first 
hour or two at home, of the bareness and 
ugliness everywhere—the old sofa that 
sagged in the seat, the scratched rockers, the 
bookcases overflowing with coverless maga¬ 
zines, and the old square piano half-buried 
under loose sheets of music. 

1 

Duncan sat on the piano bench—gloom¬ 
ily sawing at a violoncello. Robert—nine 
now, with all his pretty baby roundness 
gone, a lean little burned, peeling face, and 
big teeth missing when he smiled, stood in 




MOTHER 


135 

the bay window, twisting the already limp 
net curtains into a tight rope. Each boy 
gave Margaret a kiss that seemed curiously 
to taste of dust, sunburn, and freckles, 
before she followed a noise of hissing and 
voices to the kitchen to find Mother. 

The kitchen, at five o’clock on Saturday 
afternoon, was in wild confusion, and insuf¬ 
ferably hot. Margaret had a distinct im¬ 
pression that not a movable article therein 
was in place, and not an available inch of 
tables or chairs unused, before her eyes 
reached the tall figure of the woman in a 
gown of chocolate percale, who was frying 
cutlets at the big littered range. Her face 
was dark with heat and streaked with 
perspiration. She turned as Margaret en¬ 
tered, and gave a delighted cry. 

“Well, there’s my girl! Bless her heart! 
Look out for this spoon, lovey,” she added 
immediately, giving the girl a guarded em¬ 
brace. Tears of joy stood frankly in her 
fine eyes. 


MOTHER 


136 

“I meant to have all of this out of the 
way, dear/’ apologized Mrs. Paget, with 
a gesture that included cakes in the process 
of frosting, salad vegetables in the process 
of cooling, soup in the process of getting 
strained, great loaves of bread that sent a 
delicious fragrance over all the other odors. 
“But we didn’t look for you until six.” 

“Oh, no matter!” Margaret said bravely. 

“Rebecca tell you Dad didn’t get his 
raise?” called Mrs. Paget, in a voice that 
rose above the various noises of the kitchen. 
“Blanche'” she protested, “can’t that 
wait?” for the old negress had begun to 
crack ice with deafening smashes. But 
Blanche did not hear, so Mrs. Paget contin¬ 
ued loudly: “Dad saw Redman himself; 
he’ll tell you about it! Don’t stay in the 
kitchen in that pretty dress, dear! I’m 
coming right upstairs.” 

It was very hot upstairs; the bedrooms 
smelled faintly of matting, the soap in the 
bathroom was shrivelled in its saucer. In 


MOTHER 


137 

Margaret’s old room the week’s washing 
had been piled high on the bed. She took 
off her hat and linen coat, brushed her hair 
back from her face, flinging her head back 
and shutting her eyes the better to fight 
tears as she did so, and began to assort the 
collars and shirts and put them away. For 
Dad’s bureau—for Bruce’s bureau—for the 
boys’ bureau, tablecloths to go downstairs, 
towels for the shelves in the bathroom. 
Two little shirtwaists for Rebecca with 
little holes torn through them where collar 
and belt pins belonged. 

Her last journey took her to the big, 
third-story room where the three younger 
boys slept. The three narrow beds were 
still unmade, and the western sunlight 
poured over tumbled blankets and the 
scattered small possessions that seem to 
ooze from the pores of little boys. Mar¬ 
garet set her lips distastefully as she brought 
order out of chaos. It was all wrong, some¬ 
how, she thought, gathering handkerchiefs 


138 MOTHER 

and matches and “Nick Carters” and the 
oiled paper that had wrapped caramels 
from under the pillows that would in a few 
hours harbor a fresh supply. 

She went out on the porch in time to put 
her arms about her father’s shabby shoul¬ 
ders when he came in. Mr. Paget was tired, 
and he told his wife and daughters that he 
thought he was a very sick man. Mar¬ 
garet’s mother met this statement with an 
anxious solicitude that was very soothing 
to the sufferer. She made Mark get Daddy 
his slippers and loose coat, and suggested 
that Rebecca shake up the dining-room 
couch before she established him there, in 
a rampart of pillows. No outsider would 
have dreamed that Mrs. Paget had dealt 
with this exact emergency some hundreds of 
times in the past twenty years. 

Mr. Paget, reclining, shut his eyes, re¬ 
marked that he had had an “awful, awful 
day,” and wondered faintly if it would be 
too much trouble to have “somebody” 


MOTHER 


i39 

make him just a little milk toast for his 
dinner. He smiled at Margaret when she 
sat down beside him; all the children were 
dear, but the oldest daughter knew she 
came first with her father. 

“Getting to be an old, old man!” he said 
wearily, and Margaret hated herself be¬ 
cause she had to quell an impatient impulse 
to tell him he was merely tired and cross 
and hungry, before she could say, in the 
proper soothing tone, “Don’t talk that way. 
Dad darling!” She had to listen to a long 
account of the “raise,” wincing every time 
her father emphasized the difference be¬ 
tween her own position and that of her 
employer. Dad was at least the equal of 
any one in Weston! Why, a man Dad’s age 
oughtn’t to be humbly asking a raise, he 
ought to be dictating now. It was just 
Dad’s way of looking at things, and it was 
all wrong. 

“Well, I’ll tell you one thing!” said 
Rebecca, who had come in with a brimming 


MOTHER 


140 

soup plate of milk toast, “Joe Redman gave 
a picnic last month, and he came here with 
his mother, in the car, to ask me. And I 
was the scornfullest thing you ever saw, 
wasn’t I, Ted? Not much!” 

“Oh, Beck, you oughtn’t to mix social 
and business things that way!” Margaret 
said helplessly. 

“Dinner!” screamed the nine-year-old 
Robert, breaking into the room at this 
point, and “Dinner!” said Mrs. Paget, 
wearily, cheerfully, from the chair into 
which she had dropped at the head of the 
table. Mr. Paget, revived by sympathy, 
milk toast, and Rebecca’s attentions, took 
his place at the foot, and Bruce the chair 
between Margaret and his mother. Like 
the younger boys, whose almost confluent 
freckles had been brought into unusual prom¬ 
inence by violently applied soap and water, 
and whose hair dripped on their collars, he 
had brushed up for dinner, but his negligee 
shirt and corduroy trousers were stained and 


MOTHER 


141 

spotted from machine oil. Margaret, com¬ 
paring him secretly to the men she knew, as 
daintily groomed as women, in their spotless 
white, felt a little resentment that Bruce’s 
tired face was so contented, and said to her¬ 
self again that it was all wrong. 

Dinner was the same old haphazard meal 
with which she was so familiar; Blanche 
supplying an occasional reproof to the boys, 
Ted ignoring his vegetables, and ready in 
an incredibly short time for a second cutlet, 
and Robert begging for corn syrup, im¬ 
mediately after the soup, and spilling it 
from his bread. Mrs. Paget was flushed, 
her disappearances kitchenward frequent. 
She wanted Margaret to tell her all about 
Mr. Tenison. Margaret laughed, and said 
there was nothing to tell. 

“You might get a horse and buggy from 
Peterson’s,” suggested Mrs. Paget, inter¬ 
estedly, “and drive about after dinner.” 

“Oh, Mother, I don’t think I had better 
let him come!” Margaret said, “There’s 


MOTHER 


142 

so many of us, and such confusion, on 
Sunday! Ju and Harry arc almost sure to 
come over.” 

“ Yes, I guess they will,” Mrs. Paget said, 
with her sudden radiant smile. “Ju is so 
dear in her little house, and Harry’s so sweet 
with her,” she went on with vivacity. 
“Daddy and I had dinner with them Tues¬ 
day. Bruce said Rebecca was lovely with 
the boys—we’re going to Julie’s again 
some time. I declare it’s so long since we’ve 
been anywhere without the children that 
we both felt funny. It was a lovely eve¬ 
ning.” 

“You’re too much tied, Mother,” Mar¬ 
garet said affectionately. 

“Not now!” her mother protested radi¬ 
antly. “With all my babies turning into 
men and women so fast. And I’ll have you 
all together to-morrow—and your friend 
I hope, too, Mark,” she added hospitably. 
“You had better let him come, dear. 
There’s a big dinner, and I always freeze 


MOTHER 


i43 

more cream than we need, anyway, because 
Daddy likes a plate of it about four o’clock, 
if there’s any left.” 

“Well—but there’s nothing to do,” Mar¬ 
garet protested. 

“No, but dinner takes quite a while,” 
Mrs. Paget suggested a little doubtfully; 
“and we could have a nice talk on the porch, 
and then you could go driving or walking. 
I wish there was something cool and pleasant 
to do, Mark,” she finished a little wistfully. 
“You do just as you think best about asking 
him to come.” 

“I think I’ll wire him that another time 
would be better,” said Margaret, slowly. 
“Some time we’ll regularly arrange for it.” 

“Well, perhaps that would be best,” her 
mother agreed. “Some other time we’ll 
send the boys off before dinner, and have 
things all nice and quiet. In October, say, 
when the trees are so pretty. I don’t know 
but what that’s my favorite time of all the 



MOTHER 


144 

Margaret looked at her as if she found 
something new in the tired, bright face- 
She could not understand why her mother— 
still too heated to commence eating her 
dinner—should radiate so definite an atmos¬ 
phere of content, as she sat back a little 
breathless, after the flurry of serving. She 
herself felt injured and sore, not at the mere 
disappointment it caused her to put off 
John Tenison’s visit, but because she felt 
more acutely than ever to-night the differ¬ 
ence between his position and her own. 

“Something nice has happened, Mother?” 
she hazarded, entering with an effort into 
the older woman’s mood. 

“Nothing special.” Her mother’s happy 
eyes ranged about the circle of young faces. 
“But it’s so lovely to have you here, and 
to have Ju coming to-morrow,” she said. 
“I just wish Daddy could build a house for 
each one of you, as you marry and settle 
down, right around our house in a circle, 
as they say people do sometimes in the Old 


MOTHER i 45 

World, I think then I’d have nothing in 
life to wish for!” 

“Oh, Mother—in Weston!” Margaret 
said hopelessly, but her mother did not 
catch it. 

“Not, Mark,” she went on hastily and 
earnestly, “that Fm not more than grateful 
to God for all His goodness, as it is! I look 
at other women, and I wonder, I wonder— 
what I have done to be so blessed! Mark 
—” her face suddenly glowed, she leaned a 
little toward her daughter, “dearie, I must 
tell you,” she said; “it’s about Ju-” 

Their eyes met in the pause. 

“Mother—really?” Margaret said slowly. 

“She told me on Tuesday,” Mrs. Paget 
said, with glistening eyes. “Now, not a 
word to any one, Mark—but she’ll want 
you to know!” 

“And is she glad?” Margaret said, unable 
to rejoice. 

“Glad?” Mrs. Paget echoed, her face 
gladness itself. 



MOTHER 


146 

“Well, Ju’s so young—just twenty-one/’ 
Margaret submitted a little uncertainly; 
“and she’s been so free—and they’re just 
in the new house! And I thought they were 
going to Europe!” 

“Oh, Europe!” Mrs. Paget dismissed it 
cheerfully. “Why, it’s the happiest time 
in a woman’s life, Mark! Or I don’t know, 
though,” she went on thoughtfully, “I 
don’t know but what I was happiest when 
you were all tiny, tumbling about me, and 
climbing into my lap. . . . Why, you 

love children, dear,” she finished, with a 
shade of reproach in her voice, as Mar¬ 
garet still looked sober. 

“Yes, I know, Mother,” Margaret said. 
“But Julie’s only got the one maid, and I 
don’t suppose they can have another. I 
hope to goodness Ju won’t get herself all 
run down!” 

Her mother laughed. “You remind me 
of Grandma Paget,” said she, cheerfully; 
“she lived ten miles away when we were 




MOTHER 


i 47 

married, but she came in when Bruce was 
born. She was rather a proud, cold woman 
herself, but she was very sweet to me. 
Well, then little Charlie came, fourteen 
months later, and she took that very seri¬ 
ously. Mother was dead, you know, and 
she stayed with me again, and worried me 
half sick telling me that it wasn’t fair to 
Bruce and it wasn’t fair to Charlie to divide 
my time between them that way. Well, 
then when my third baby was coming, I 
didn’t dare tell her. Dad kept telling me 
to, and I couldn’t, because I knew what a 
calamity a third would seem to her! Finally 
she went to visit Aunt Rebecca out West, 
and it was the very day she got back that 
the baby came. She came upstairs—she’d 
come right up from the train, and not seen 
any one but Dad; and he wasn’t very intel¬ 
ligible, I guess—and she sat down and took 
the baby in her arms, and says she, looking 
at me sort of patiently, yet as if she was ex¬ 
asperated, too: ‘Well, this is a nice way to 



I 


148 MOTHER 

do, the minute my back’s turned! What 
are you going to call him, Julia?’ And I 
said, ‘I’m going to call her Margaret, for 
my dear husband’s mother, and she’s going 
to be beautiful and good, and grow up to 
marry the President!’ ” Mrs. Paget’s merry 
laugh rang out. “I never shall forget your 
grandmother’s face. 

“ Just the same,” Mrs. Paget added, with 
a sudden deep sigh, “when little Charlie 
left us, the next year, and Brucie and Dad 
were both so ill, she and I agreed that you 
—you were just talking and trying to walk 
—were the only comfort we had! I could 
wish my girls no greater happiness than my 
children have been to me,” finished Mother, 
contentedly. 

“I know,” Margaret began, half angrily; 
“but what about the children?” she was 
going to add. But somehow the arguments 
she had used so plausibly did not utter them¬ 
selves easily to Mother, whose children 
would carry into their own middle age a 


MOTHER 


149 

wholesome dread of her anger. Margaret 
faltered, and merely scowled. 

“I don’t like to see that expression on 
your face, dearie,” her mother said, as she 
might have said it to an eight-year-old 
child. “ Be my sweet girl! Why, marriage 
isn’t marriage without children, Mark. 
I’ve been thinking all week of having a 
baby in my arms again—it’s so long since 
Rob was a baby.” 

Margaret devoted herself, with a rather 
sullen face, to her dessert. Mother would 
never feel as she did about these things, and 
what was the use of arguing? In the silence 
she heard her father speak loudly and sud¬ 
denly. 

“I am not in a position to have my 
children squander money on concerts and 
candy,” he said. Margaret forgot her own 
grievance, and looked up. The boys looked 
resentful and gloomy; Rebecca was flushed, 
her eyes dropped, her lips trembling with 
disappointment. 



MOTHER 


ISO 

“I had promised to take them to the Elks’ 
Concert and dance,” Mrs. Paget inter¬ 
preted hastily. “But now Dad says the 
Bakers are coming over to play whist.” 

“Is it going to be a good show, Ted?” 
Margaret asked. 

“Oh,” Rebecca flashed into instant glow¬ 
ing response. “It’s going to be a dandy! 
Every one’s going to be there! Ford Pat¬ 
terson is going to do a monologue—he’s as 
good as a professional!—and George is going 
to send up a bunch of carrots and parsnips! 
And the Weston Male Quartette, Mark, and 
a playlet by the Hunt’s Crossing Amateur 
Theatrical Society!” 

“Oh—oh!”—Margaret mimicked the 
eager rush of words. “Let me take them, 
Dad,” she pleaded, “if it’s going to be as 
fine as all that! I’ll stand treat for the 
crowd.” 

“Oh, Mark, you darling!” burst from the 
rapturous Rebecca. 

“Say, gee, we’ve got to get there early V* 





MOTHER 


IS 1 

Theodore warned them, finishing his pud¬ 
ding with one mammoth spoonful. 

“If you take them, my dear,” Mr. Paget 
said graciously, “of course Mother and I are 
quite satisfied.” 

“Til hold Robert by one ear and Rebecca 
by another,” Margaret promised; “and if 
she so much as dares to look at George or 
Ted or Jimmy Barr or Paul, I’ll-” 

“Oh, Jimmy belongs to Louise, now,” 
said Rebecca, radiantly. There was a joy¬ 
ous shout of laughter from the light-hearted 
juniors, and Rebecca, seeing her artless ad¬ 
mission too late, turned scarlet while she 
laughed. Dinner broke up in confusion, as 
dinner at home always did, and everybody 
straggled upstairs to dress. 

Margaret, changing her dress in a room 
that was insufferably hot, because the 
shades must be down, and the gas-lights as 
high as possible, reflected that another 
forty-eight hours would see her speeding 
back to the world of cool, awninged interiors, 



MOTHER 


152 

uniformed maids, the clink of iced glasses, 

the flash of white sails on blue water. She 
could surely afford for that time to be 
patient and sweet. She lifted Rebecca’s 

starched petticoat from the bed to give 
Mother a seat, when Mother came rather 
wearily in to watch them. 

“ Sweet girl to take them, Mark,” said 
Mother, appreciatively. “I was going to 
ask Brucie. But he’s gone to bed, poor 
fellow; he’s worn out to-night.” 

“He had a letter from Ned Gunther this 
morning,” said Rebecca, cheerfully—pow¬ 
dering the tip of her pretty nose, her eyes al¬ 
most crossed with concentration—“and I 
think it made him blue all day.” 

“Ned Gunther?” said Margaret. 

“Chum at college,” Rebecca elucidated; 
“a lot of them are going to Honolulu, just 
for this month, and of course they wanted 
Bruce. Mark, does that show?” 

Margaret’s heart ached for the beloved 
brother’s disappointment. There it was 


MOTHER 


i 53 

again, all wrong! Before she left the house 
with the rioting youngsters, she ran up¬ 
stairs to his room. Bruce, surrounded by 
scientific magazines, a drop-light with a 
vivid green shade over his shoulder, looked 
up with a welcoming smile. 

“Sit down and talk, Mark,” said he. 

Margaret explained her hurry. 

“Bruce—this isn’t much fun!” she said, 
looking about the room with its shabby 
dresser and worn carpet. “Why aren’t you 
going to the concert?” 

■“Is there a concert?” he asked, surprised. 

“Why, didn’t you hear us talking at 
dinner? The Elks, you know.” 

“Well—sure! I meant to go to that. I 
forgot it was to-night,” he said, with his 
lazy smile. “I came home all in, forgot 
everything.” 

“Oh, come!” Margaret urged, as eagerly 
as Rebecca ever did. “It’s early, Bruce, 
come on! You don’t have to shave! We’ll 
hold a seat—come on!” 



MOTHER 


154 

“Sure, I will!” he said, suddenly roused. 
The magazines rapped on the floor, and 
Margaret had barely shut the door behind 
her when she heard his bare feet follow 
them. 

It was like old times to sit next to him 
through the hot merry evening, while 
Rebecca glowed like a little rose among her 
friends, and the smaller boys tickled her ear 
with their whispered comments. Margaret 
had sent a telegram to Professor Tenison, 
and felt relieved that at least that strain was 
spared her. She even danced with Bruce 
after the concert, and with one or two old 
friends. 

Afterward they strolled back slowly 
through the inky summer dark, finding the 
house hot and close when they came in. 
Margaret went upstairs, hearing her mother’s 
apologetic, “Oh, Dad, why didn’t I give 
you back your club?” as she passed the 
dining-room door. She knew Mother hated 
whist, and wondered rather irritably why 


MOTHER 


1 55 

she played it. The Paget family was slow 
to settle down. Robert became tearful 
and whining before he was finally bumped 
protesting into bed. Theodore and Duncan 
prolonged their ablutions until the noise of 
shouting, splashing, and thumping in the 
bathroom brought Mother to the foot of the 
stairs. Rebecca was conversational. She 
lay with her slender arms locked behind 
her head on the pillow, and talked, as Julie 
had talked on that memorable night five 
years ago. Margaret, restless in the hot 
darkness, wondering whether the madden¬ 
ing little shaft of light from the hall gas 
was annoying enough to warrant the effort 
of getting up and extinguishing it, listened 
and listened. 

Rebecca wanted to join the Stage Club, 
but Mother wouldn’t let her unless Bruce 
did. Rebecca belonged to the Progressive 
Diners. Did Mark suppose Mother’d think 
she was crazy if she asked the family not 
to be in evidence when the crowd came to 


156 MOTHER 

the house for the salad course? And 
Rebecca wanted to write to Bruce’s chum, 
not regularly, you know, Mark, but just 
now and then, he was so nice! And Mother 
didn’t like the idea. Margaret was ob¬ 
viously supposed to lend a hand with these 
interesting tangles. 

. . and I said, ‘Certainly not! I 

won’t unmask at all, if it comes to that!" 

. . . And imagine that elegant fellow 

carrying my old books and my skates! So 
I wrote, and Maudie and I decided. . . 

And Mark, if it wasn’t a perfectly gorgeous 
box of roses! . . . That old, old dimity, 

but Mother pressed and freshened it up. 
. . . Not that I want to marry him* or 

any one . . .” 

Margaret wakened from uneasy drowsing 
with a start. The hall was dark now, the 
room cooler. Rebecca was asleep. Hands, 
hands she knew well, were drawing a light 
covering over her shoulders. She opened 
her eyes to see her mother. 


MOTHER 


157 

‘‘I’ve been wondering if you’re disap¬ 
pointed about your friend not coming to¬ 
morrow, Mark?” said the tender voice. 

“Oh, no-o!” said Margaret, hardily. 
“Mother—why are you up so late?” 

“Just going to bed,” said the other, 
soothingly. “ Blanche forgot to put the 
oatmeal into the cooker, and I went down¬ 
stairs again. I’ll say my prayers in here.” 

Margaret went off to sleep again, as she 
had so many hundied times before, with 
her mother kneeling beside her. 


CHAPTER VII 


I T SEEMED but a few moments before 
the blazing Sunday was precipitated 
upon them, and everybody was late for 
everything. 

The kitchen was filled with the smoke 
from hot griddles blue in the sunshine when 
Margaret went downstairs; and in the 
dining-room the same merciless light fell 
upon the sticky syrup pitcher, and upon the 
stains on the tablecloth. Cream had been 
brought in in the bottle, the bread tray was 
heaped with orange skins, and the rolls 
piled on the tablecloth. Bruce, who had 
already been to church with Mother and 
was off for a day’s sail, was dividing his 
attention between Robert and his watch. 
Rebecca, daintily busy with the special 
cup and plate that were one of her little 



MOTHER 


i59 


affectations, was all ready for the day, ex¬ 
cept as to dress, wearing a thin little kimono 
over her blue ribbons and starched em¬ 
broideries. Mother was putting up a little 
lunch for Bruce. Confusion reigned. The 
younger boys were urged to hurry, if they 
wanted to make the “nine/’ Rebecca was 
going to wait for the “half-past ten,” be¬ 
cause the “kids sang at nine, and it was 
fierce.” Mr. Paget and his sons departed 
together, and the girls went upstairs for a 
hot, tiring tussle with beds and dusting 
before starting for church. They left their 
mother busy with the cream freezer in the 
kitchen. It was very hot even then. 

But it was still hotter, walking home in 
the burning midday stillness. A group of 
young people waited lazily for letters, under 
the trees outside the post-office door. Other¬ 
wise the main street was deserted. A 
languid little breeze brought the far echoes 
of pianos and phonographs from this di¬ 
rection and that. 


i6o 


MOTHER 


“ Who’s that on the porch?” said Rebecca, 
suddenly, as they neared home, instantly 
finding the stranger among her father and 
the boys. Margaret, glancing up sharply, 
saw, almost with a sensation of sickness, 
the big, ungainly figure, the beaming smile, 
and the shock of dark hair that belonged to 
nobody else in the world but John Tenison. 
A stony chill settled about her heart as she 
went up the steps and gave him her hand. 

Oh, if he only couldn’t stay to dinner, she 
prayed. Oh, if only he could spare them 
time for no more than a flying visit! With 
a sinking heart she smiled her greetings. 

“Doctor Tenison—this is very nice of 
you!” Margaret said. “Have you met my 
father—my small brothers?” 

“We have been having a great talk,” 
said John Tenison, genially, “and this 
young man”—he indicated Robert—“has 
been showing me the colored supplement 
of the paper. I didn’t have any word from 
you, Miss Paget,” he went on, “so I took 



MOTHER 


161 


the chance of finding you. And your 
mother has assured me that I will not put 
her out by staying to have luncheon with 
you.” 

“Oh, that’s nice!” Margaret said me¬ 
chanically, trying to dislodge Robert from 
the most comfortable chair by a significant 
touch of her fingers on his small shoulder. 
Robert perfectly understood that she 
wanted the chair, but continued in absorbed 
study of the comic supplement, merely 
wriggling resentfully at Margaret’s touch. 
Margaret, at the moment, would have been 
glad to use violence on the stubborn, serene 
little figure. When he was finally dislodged, 
she sat down, still flushed from her walk 
and the nervousness Doctor Tenison’s ar¬ 
rival caused her, and tried to bring the 
conversation into a normal channel. But 
an interruption occurred in the arrival of 
Harry and Julie in the runabout; the little 
boys swarmed down to examine it. Julie, 
very pretty, with a perceptible little new air 


MOTHER 


162 

of dignity, went upstairs to freshen hair 
and gown, and Harry, pushing his straw 
hat back the better to mop his forehead, 
immediately engaged Doctor Tenison’s at¬ 
tention with the details of what sounded to 
Margaret like a particularly uninteresting 
operation, which he had witnessed the day 
before. 

Utterly discouraged, and acutely wretched, 
Margaret presently slipped away, and went 
into the kitchen, to lend a hand with the 
dinner preparations if help was needed. 
The room presented a scene if possible a 
little more confused than that of the day 
before, and was certainly hotter. Her 
mother, flushed and hurried, in a fresh but 
rather unbecoming gingham, was putting 
up a cold supper for the younger boys, who, 
having duly attended to their religious 
duties, were to take a long afternoon tramp, 
with a possible interval of fishing. She 
buttered each slice of the great loaf before 
she cut it, and lifted it carefully on the knife 


MOTHER 


163 

before beginning the next slice. An opened 
pot of jam stood at her elbow. A tin cup 
and the boys’ fishing-gear lay on a chair. 
Theodore and Duncan themselves hung over 
these preparations; never apparently help¬ 
ing themselves to food, yet never with 
empty mouths. Blanche, moaning “The 
Palms” with the insistence of one who wishes 
to show her entire familiarity with a mel¬ 
ody, was at the range. 

Roast veal, instead of the smothered 
chickens her mother had so often, and 
cooked so deliciously, a mountain of mashed 
potato—corn on the cob, and an enormous 
heavy salad mantled with mayonnaise— 
Margaret could have wept over the hope¬ 
lessly plebeian dinner! 

“Mother, mayn’t I get down the finger- 
bowls,” she asked; “and mayn’t we have 
black coffee in the silver pot, afterward?” 

Mrs. Paget looked absently at her for a 
dubious second. “I don’t like to ask 
Blanche to wash all that extra glass,” she 



164 MOTHER 

said, in an undertone, adding briskly to 
Theodore, “No, no, Ted! You can’t have 
all that cake. Half that!” and to Blanche 
herself, “Don’t leave the door open when 
you go in, Blanche; I just drove all the flies 
out of the dining-room.” Then she re¬ 
turned to Margaret with a cordial: “Why, 
certainly, dear! Any one who wants cof¬ 
fee, after tea, can have it! Dad always 
wants his cup of tea.” 

“Nobody but us ever serves tea with 
dinner!” Margaret muttered; but her 
mother did not hear it. She buckled the 
strap of the lunch-box, straightened her 
back with an air of relief, and pushed down 
her rolled-up sleeves. 

“Don’t lose that napkin, Ted,” said she, 
and receiving the boy’s grateful kiss hap¬ 
hazard between her hair and forehead, she 
added affectionately: “You’re more than 
welcome, dear! We’re all ready, Mark—go 
and tell them, dear! All right, Blanche.” 

Ruffled and angry, Margaret went to 



MOTHER 165 

summon the others to dinner. Maudie 
had joined them on the porch now, and had 
been urged to stay, and was already trying 
her youthful wiles on the professor. 

“Well, he’ll have to leave on the five 
o’clock!” Margaret reflected, steeled to 
bitter endurance until that time. For every¬ 
thing went wrong, and dinner was one long 
nightmare for her. Professor Tenison’s 
napkin turned out to be a traycloth. 
Blanche, asked for another, disappeared for 
several minutes, and returned without it, 
to whisper in Mrs. Paget’s ear. Mrs. 
Paget immediately sent her own fresh nap¬ 
kin to the guest. The incident, or some¬ 
thing in their murmured conversation, gave 
Rebecca and Maudie “the giggles.” There 
seemed an exhausting amount of passing 
and repassing of plates. The room was 
hot, the supply of ice insufficient. Mr. 
Paget dwelt on his favorite grievance—“the 
old man isn’t needed, these days. They’re 
getting all young fellows into the bank. 


MOTHER 


166 

They put young college fellows in there who 
are getting pretty near the money I am— 
after twenty-five years!” In any pause* 
Mrs. Paget could be heard, patiently dis¬ 
suading little Robert from his fixed inten¬ 
tion of accompanying the older boys on 
their walk, whether invited or uninvited. 

John Tenison behaved charmingly, eating 
his dinner with enjoyment, looking inter¬ 
estedly from one face to the other, sym¬ 
pathetic, alert, and amused. But Mar¬ 
garet writhed in spirit at what he must be 
thinking. 

Finally the ice cream, in a melting condi¬ 
tion, and the chocolate cake, very sticky, 
made their appearance; and although these 
were regular Sunday treats, the boys felt 
called upon to cheer. Julie asked her mother 
in an audible undertone if she “ought” to 
eat cake. Doctor Tenison produced an enor¬ 
mous box of chocolates, and Margaret was 
disgusted with the frantic scramble her 
brothers made to secure them. 


MOTHER 


167 

“If you’re going for a walk, dear,” her 
mother said, when the meal was over, 
“you’d better go. It’s almost three now.” 

“I don’t know whether we will, it’s so 
hot,” Margaret said, in an indifferent tone, 
but she could easily have broken into dis¬ 
heartened tears. 

“Oh, go,” Julie urged, “it’s much cooler 
out.” They were up in Margaret’s old 
room, Mrs. Paget tying a big apron about 
Julie’s ruffled frock, preparatory to an at¬ 
tack upon the demoralized kitchen. “We 
think he’s lovely,” the little matron went 
on approvingly. “Don’t fall in love with 
him, Mark.” 

“Why not?” Margaret said carelessly, 
pinning on her hat. 

“Well, I don’t imagine he’s a marrying 
man,” said the young authority, wisely. 
Margaret flushed, and was angry at herself 
for flushing. But when Mrs. Paget had 
gone downstairs, Julie came very simply 
and charmingly over to her sister, and 


MOTHER 


168 

standing close beside her with embarrassed 
eyes on her own hand—very youthful in 
its plain ring—as she played with the bureau 
furnishing, she said: 

“Mother tell you?” 

Margaret looked down at the flushed 
face. 

“Are you sorry, Ju?” 

“Sorry!” The conscious eyes flashed 
into view. “Sorry!” Julie echoed in as^ 
tonishment. “Why, Mark,” she said 
dreamily—there was no affectation of ma¬ 
turity in her manner now, and it was all the 
more impressive for that. “Why, Mark,” 
said she, “it’s—it’s the most wonderful 
thing that ever happened to me! I think 
and think”—her voice dropped very low— 
“of holding it in my arms—mine and 
Harry’s, you know—and of its little face!” 

Margaret, stirred, kissed the wet lashes. 

“Ju, but you’re so young—you’re such a 
baby yourself!” she said. 

“And, Mark,” Julie said, T unheeding, 




MOTHER 


169 

“you know what Harry and I are going to 
call her, if it’s a girl? Not for Mother, for 
it’s so confusing to have two Julias, but for 
you! Because/’ her arms went about her 
sister, “you’ve always been such a darling 
to me, Mark!” 

Margaret went downstairs very thought¬ 
fully, and out into the silent Sunday streets. 
Where they walked, or what they talked of, 
she did not know. She knew that her head 
ached, and that the village looked very 
commonplace, and that the day was very 
hot. She found it more painful than sweet 
to be strolling along beside the big, loose- 
jointed figure, and to send an occasional 
side glance to John Tenison’s earnest face, 
which wore its pleasantest expression now. 
Ah, well, it would be all over at five o’clock, 
she said wearily to herself, and she could 
go home and lie down with her aching head 
in a darkened room, and try not to think 
what to-day might have been. Try not to 
think of the dainty little luncheon Annie 






MOTHER 


170 

would have given them at Mrs. Carr-Boldt’s, 
of the luxurious choice of amusements after¬ 
ward: motoring over the lovely country 
roads, rowing on the wide still water, watch¬ 
ing the tennis courts, or simply resting in 
deep chairs on the sweep of velvet lawn 
above the river. 

She came out of a reverie to find Doctor 
Tenison glancing calmly up from his 
watch. 

“The train was five o’clock, was it?” he 
said. “I’ve missed it!” 

“Missed it!” Margaret echoed blankly. 
Then, as the horrible possibility dawned 
upon her, “Oh, no!” 

“Oh, yes—bad as that!” he said, laugh¬ 
ing at her. 

Poor Margaret, fighting despair, strug¬ 
gled to recover herself. 

“Well, I thought it might have been im¬ 
portant to you!” she said, laughing quite 
naturally. “There’s a seven-six, but it 
stops everywhere, and a ten-thirty. The 







MOTHER 


m 

ten-thirty is best, because supper’s apt to 
be a little late.” 

“The ten-thirty,” Doctor Tenison echoed 
contentedly. Margaret’s heart sank—five 
more hours of the struggle! “But perhaps 
that’s an imposition,” he said. “Isn’t 
there a tea-room—isn’t there an inn here 
where we could have a bite?” 

“We aren’t in Berlin,” Margaret re¬ 
minded him cheerfully. “There’s a hotel 
—but Mother would never forgive me for 
leading any one there ! No, we’ll take that 
little walk I told you of, and Mother will 
give us something to eat later. Perhaps 
if we’re late enough,” she added to herself, 
“we can have just tea and bread and jam 
alone, after the others.” 

Suddenly, unreasonably, she felt philo¬ 
sophical and gay. The little episode of 
missing the train had given her the old dear 
feeling of adventure and comradeship again. 
Things couldn’t be any worse than they 
had been at noon, anyway. The experi- 



MOTHER 


172 

ence had been thoroughly disenchanting. 
What did a few hours, more or less, matter! 
Let him be disgusted if he wanted to, she 
couldn’t help it! 

It was cooler now, the level late shadows 
were making even Weston pretty. They 
went up a steep shady lane to the old grave¬ 
yard, and wandered, peacefully, contentedly, 
among the old graves. Margaret gathered 
her thin gown from contact with the tangled, 
uncut grass; they had to disturb a flock of 
nibbling sheep to cross to the crumbling 
wall. Leaning on the uneven stones that 
formed it, they looked down at the roofs 
of the village, half lost in tree-tops; and 
listened to the barking of dogs, and the 
shrill voices of children. The sun sank, 

* f 

lower, lower. There was a feeling of dew 
in the air as they went slowly home. 

When, at seven o’clock, they opened the 
gate, they found on the side porch only 
Rebecca, enchanting in something pink and 
dotted, Mother, and Dad. 


MOTHER 


i 73 

“ Lucky we waited!” said Rebecca, rising, 
and signalling some wordless message to 
Margaret that required dimples, widened 
eyes, compressed lips, and an expression 
of utter secrecy. “Supper’s all ready,” 
she added casually. 

“Where are the others?” Margaret said, 
experiencing the most pleasant sensation 
she had had in twenty-four hours. 

“Ju and Harry went home, Rob’s at 
George’s, boys walking,” said Rebecca, 
briefly, still dimpling mysteriously with 
additional information. She gave Margaret 
an eloquent side glance as she led the way 
into the dining-room. At the doorway 
Margaret stopped, astounded. 

The room was hardly recognizable now. 
It was cool and delightful, with the di¬ 
minished table daintily set for five. The 
old silver candlesticks and silver teapot 
presided over blue bowls of berries and the 
choicest of Mother’s preserved fruits. Some 
one had found time to put fresh parsley 


MOTHER 


174 

about the Canton platter of cold meats, 
some one had made a special trip to Mrs. 
O’Brien’s for the cream that filled the 
Wedgwood pitcher. Margaret felt tears 
press suddenly against her eyes. 

“Oh, Beck!” she could only stammer 
when the sisters went into the kitchen for 
hot water and tea biscuit. 

“Mother did it,” said Rebecca, returning 
her hug with fervor. “She gave us all an 
awful talking to after you left! She said 
here was dear old Mark, who always worked 
herself to death for us, trying to make a 
nice impression, and to have things go 
smoothly, and we were all acting like 
Indians, and everything so confused at 
dinner, and hot and noisy! So, later, when 
Paul and I and the others were walking, we 
saw you and Doctor Tenison going up 
toward the graveyard, and I tore home and 
told Mother he’d missed the five and would 
be back; it was after five then, and we just 
flew!” 


MOTHER 


1 75 

It was all like a pleasant awakening after 
a troubled dream. As Margaret took her 
place at the little feast she felt an exquisite 
sensation of peace and content sink into 
her heart. Mother was so gracious and 
charming, behind the urn; Rebecca ir¬ 
resistible in her admiration of the famous 
professor. Her father was his sweetest 
self, delightfully reminiscent of his boyhood, 
and his visit to the White House in Lincoln’s 
day, with “my uncle, the judge.” But it 
was to her mother’s face that Margaret’s 
eyes returned most often; she wanted—she 
was vaguely conscious that .he wanted—to 
get away from the voices and laughter, and 
think about Mother. How sweet she was, 
just sweet, and after all, how few people 
were that in this world! They were clever, 
and witty, and rich—plenty of them, but 
how little sweetness there was! How few 
faces, like her mother’s, did not show a line 
that was not all tenderness and goodness. 

They laughed over their teacups like old 




MOTHER 


176 

friends; the professor and Rebecca shouting 
joyously together, Mr. Paget one broad 
twinkle, Mrs. Paget radiantly reflecting, as 
she always did reflect, the others’ mood. 
It was a memorably happy hour. 

And after tea they sat on the porch, and 
the stars came out, and presently the moon 
sent silver shafts through the dark foliage 
of the trees. Little Rob came home, and 
climbed silently, contentedly, into his father’s 
lap. 

“Sing something, Mark,” said Dad, then; 
and Margaret, sitting on the steps with her 
head against her mother’s knee, found it 
very simple to begin in the darkness one of 
the old songs he loved: 

“Don’t you cry, ma honey, 

Don’t you weep no more.’’ 

Rebecca, sitting on the rail, one slender 
arm flung above her head about the pillar, 
joined her own young voice to Margaret’s 
sweet and steady one. The others hummed 


MOTHER 


177 

a little. John Tenison, sitting watching 
them, his locked hands hanging between 
his knees, saw in the moonlight a sudden 
glitter on the mother’s cheek. 

Presently Bruce, tired and happy and 
sunburned, came through the splashed 
silver-and-black of the street to sit by Mar¬ 
garet, and put his arm about her; and the 
younger boys, returning full of the day’s 
great deeds, spread themselves comfortably 
over the lower steps. Before long all their 
happy voices rose together, on “Believe 
me,” and “Working on the Railroad,” and 
“Seeing Nellie Home,” and a dozen more of 
the old songs that young people have sung 
for half a century in the summer moonlight. 

And then it was time to say good-night 
to Professor Tenison. “Come again, sir!” 
said Mr. Paget, heartily; the boys slid their 
hands, still faintly suggestive of fish, cor¬ 
dially into his; Rebecca promised to mail 
him a certain discussed variety of fern the 
very next day; Bruce’s voice sounded all 


MOTHER 


178 

hearty good-will as he hoped that he 
wouldn’t miss Doctor Tenison’s next visit. 
Mrs. Paget, her hand in his, raised keen, al¬ 
most anxious eyes to his face. 

“But surely you’ll be down our way 
again ?” said she, unsmilingly. 

“Oh, surely.” The professor was unable 
to keep his eyes from moving toward Mar¬ 
garet, and the mother saw it. 

“Good-bye for the present, then,” she 
said, still very gravely. 

“Good-bye, Mrs. Paget,” said Doctor 
Tenison. “ It’s been an inestimable privilege 
to meet you all. I haven’t ever had a hap¬ 
pier day.” 

Margaret, used to the extravagant 
speeches of another world, thought this 
merely very charming politeness. But her 
heart sang as they walked away together. 
He liked them—he had had a nice time! 

“Now I know what makes you so differ¬ 
ent from other women,” said John Tenison, 
when he and Margaret were alone. “It’s 


MOTHER 


179 

having that wonderful mother! She—she 
—well, she’s one woman in a million; I don’t 
have to tell you that! It’s something to 
thank God for, a mother like that; it’s a 
privilege to know her. I’ve been watching 
her all day, and I’ve been wondering what 
she gets out of it—that was what puzzled 
me; but now, just now, I’ve found out! 
This morning, thinking what her life is, I 
couldn’t see what repaid her, do you see? 
What made up to her for the unending, 
unending effort, and sacrifice, the pouring 
out of love and sympathy and help—year 
after year after year. . . .” 

He hesitated, but Margaret did not 
speak. 

“You know,” he went on musingly, “in 
these days, when women just serenely ignore 
the question of children, or at most, as a 
special concession, bring up one or two— 
just the one or two whose expenses can be 
comfortably met!—there’s something mag¬ 
nificent in a woman like your mother, who 





i8o 


MOTHER 


begins eight destinies instead of one! She 
doesn’t strain and chafe to express herself 
through the medium of poetry or music 
or the stage, but she puts her whole splen¬ 
did philosophy into her nursery—launches 
sound little bodies and minds that have 
their first growth cleanly and purely about 
her knees. Responsibility—that’s what 
these other women say they are afraid of! 
But it seems to me there’s no responsibility 
like that of decreeing that young lives 
simply shall not he. Why, what good is 
learning, or elegance of manner, or pain¬ 
fully acquired fineness of speech, and taste 
and point of view, if you are not going to 
distil it into the growing plants, the only 
real hope we have in the world! You know, 
Miss Paget,” his smile was very sweet in 
the half darkness, “there’s a higher tribunal 
than the social tribunal of this world, after 
all; and it seems to me that a woman who 
stands there, as your mother will, with a 
forest of new lives about her, and a record 


MOTHER 181 

like hers, will—will find she has a Friend at 
court!” he finished whimsically. 

They were at a lonely corner, and a gar¬ 
den fence offering Margaret a convenient 
support, she laid her arms suddenly upon 
the rosevine that covered it, and her face 
upon her arms, and cried as if her heart 
was broken. 

“Why, why—my dear girl!” the profes¬ 
sor said, aghast. He laid his hand on the 
shaking shoulders, but Margaret shook it 
off. 

“Tm not what you think I am!” she 
sobbed out, incoherently. “Tm not differ¬ 
ent from other women; Tm just as selfish and 
bad and mean as the worst of them! And 
Tm not worthy to t-tie my m-mother’s 
shoes !” 

“Margaret!” John Tenison said un¬ 
steadily. And in a flash her drooping bright 
head was close to his lips, and both his 
big arms were about her. “You know I 
love you, don’t you Margaret?” he said 


182 


MOTHER 


hoarsely, over and over, with a sort of fierce 
intensity. “You know that, don’t you? 
Don't you, Margaret?” 

Margaret could not speak. Emotion 
swept her like a rising tide from all her 
familiar moorings; her heart thundered, 
there was a roaring in her ears. She was 
conscious of a wild desire to answer him, 
to say one hundredth part of all she felt; 
but she could only rest, breathless, against 
him, her frightened eyes held by the eyes so 
near, his arms about her. 

“You do, don’t you, Margaret?” he said 
more gently. “You love me, don’t you? 
Don’t you?” 

And after a long time, or what seemed a 
long time, while they stood motionless in 
the summer night, with the great branches 
of the trees moving a little overhead, and 
garden scents creeping out on the damp air, 
Margaret said, with a sort of breathless 
catch in her voice: 

“You know I do!” And with the words 


MOTHER 


183 

the fright left her eyes, and happy tears 
filled them, and she raised her face to his. 

Coming back from the train half an hour 
later, she walked between a new heaven and 
a new earth! The friendly stars seemed 
just overhead; a thousand delicious odors 
came from garden beds and recently wa¬ 
tered lawns. She moved through the con¬ 
fusion that always attended the settling 
down of the Pagets for the night like one 
in a dream, and was glad to find herself at 
last lying in the darkness beside the sleep¬ 
ing Rebecca again. Now, now, she could 
think! 

But it was all too wonderful for reason¬ 
able thought. Margaret clasped both her 
hands against her rising heart. He loved 
her. She could think of the very words he 
had used in telling her, over and over again. 
She need no longer wonder and dream and 
despair: he had said it. He loved her, had 
loved her from the very first. His old aunt 
suspected it, and his chum suspected it, 


184 MOTHER 

and he had thought Margaret knew it. 
And beside him in that brilliant career that 
she had followed so wistfully in her dreams, 
Margaret saw herself, his wife. Young and 
clever and good to look upon—yes, she was 
free to-night to admit herself all these good 
things for his sake!—and his wife, mount¬ 
ing as he mounted beside the one man in the 
world she had elected to admire and love. 
“Doctor and Mrs. John Tenison”—so it 
would be written. “ Doctor Tenison’s wife” 
—“This is Mrs. Tenison”—she seemed al¬ 
ready to hear the magical sound of it! 

Love—what a wonderful thing it was! 
How good God was to send this best of all 
gifts to her! She thought how it belittled 
the other good things of the world. She 
asked no more of life, now; she was loved by 
a good man, and a great man, and she was to 
be his wife. Ah, the happy years together 
that would date from to-night—Margaret 
was thrilling already to their delights. 
“For better or worse,” the old words came 






MOTHER 


185 

to her with a new meaning. There would 
be no worse, she said to herself with sudden 
conviction—how could there be? Poverty, 
privation, sickness might come—but to 
bear them with John—to comfort and sus¬ 
tain him, to be shut away with him from all 
the world but the world of their own four 
walls—why, that would be the greatest 
happiness of all! What hardship could be 
hard that knitted their two hearts closer to¬ 
gether; what road too steep if they essayed 
it hand in hand? 

And that—her confused thoughts ran on 
—that was what had changed all life for 
Julie. She had forgotten Europe, forgotten 
all the idle ambitions of her girlhood, be¬ 
cause she loved her husband; and now the 
new miracle was to come to her—the miracle 
of a child, the little perfect promise of the 
days to come. How marvellous—how mar¬ 
vellous it was! The little imperative, help¬ 
less third person, bringing to radiant youth 
and irresponsibility the terrors of danger 








i86 


MOTHER 


and anguish, and the great final joy, to 
share together. That was life. Julie was 
living; and although Margaret’s own heart 
was not yet a wife’s, and she could not yet 
find room for the love beyond that, still she 
was strangely, deeply stirred now by a long¬ 
ing for all the experiences that life held. 

How she loved everything and everybody 
to-night—how she loved just being alive— 
just being Margaret Paget, lying here in the 
dark dreaming and thinking. There was no 
one in the world with whom she would 
change places to-night! Margaret found 
herself thinking of one woman of her ac¬ 
quaintance after another—and her own 
future, opening all color of rose before her, 
seemed to her the one enviable path through 
the world. 

In just one day, she realized with vague 
wonder, her slowly formed theories had 
been set at naught, her whole philosophy 
turned upside down. Had these years of 
protest and rebellion done no more than 



MOTHER 


187 

lead her in a wide circle, past empty gain, 
and joyless mirth, and the dead sea fruit of 
riches and idleness, back to her mother’s 
knees again ? She had met brilliant women, 
rich women, courted women—but where 
among them was one whose face had ever 
shone as her mother’s shone to-day? The 
overdressed, idle dowagers; the matrons, 
with their too-gay frocks, their too-full days, 
their too-rich food; the girls, all crudeness, 
artifice, all scheming openly for their own 
advantage—where among them all was hap¬ 
piness ? Where among them was one whom 
Margaret had heard say—as she has heard 
her mother say so many, many times— 
“ Children, this is a happy day,”—“ Thank 
God for another lovely Sunday all together,” 
—“ Isn’t it lovely to get up and find the sun 
shining?”—“Isn’t it good to come home 
hungry to such a nice dinner?” 

And what a share of happiness her mother 
had given the world! How she had planned 
and worked for them all—Margaret let her 


i88 


MOTHER 


arm fall across the sudden ache in her eyes 
as she thought of the Christmas mornings, 
and the stuffed stockings at the fireplace 
that proved every childish wish remem¬ 
bered, every little hidden hope guessed! 
Darling Mother—she hadn’t had much 
money for those Christmas stockings, they 
must have been carefully planned, down to 
the last candy cane. And how her face 
would beam, as she sat at the breakfast- 
table, enjoying her belated coffee, after the 
cold walk to church, and responding warmly 
to the onslaught of kisses and hugs that 
added fresh color to her cold, rosy cheeks! 
What a mother she was—Margaret remem¬ 
bered her making them all help her clear 
up the Christmas disorder of tissue paper 
and ribbons; then came the inevitable bed 
making, then tippets and overshoes, for a 
long walk with Dad. They would come 
back to find the dining-room warm, the 
long table set, the house deliciously fragrant 
from the immense turkey that their mother, 




MOTHER 


189 

a fresh apron over her holiday gown, was 
basting at the oven. Then came the feast, 
and then games until twilight, and more 
table-setting; and the baby, whoever he 
was, was tucked away upstairs before tea, 
and the evening ended with singing, gath¬ 
ered about Mother at the piano. 

“How happy we all were!” Margaret 
said; “and how she worked for us!” 

And suddenly theories and speculation 
ended, and she knew . She knew that faith¬ 
ful, self-forgetting service, and the love that 
spends itself over and over, only to be re¬ 
newed again and again, are the secret of 
happiness. For another world, perhaps 
leisure and beauty and luxury—but in this 
one, “Who loses his life shall gain it.” 
Margaret knew now that her mother was 
not only the truest, the finest, the most 
generous woman she had ever known, but 
the happiest as well. 

She thought of other women like her 
mother; she suddenly saw what made their 


MOTHER 


190 

lives beautiful. She could understand now 
why Emily Porter, her old brave little asso¬ 
ciate of school-teaching days, was always 
bright, why Mary Page, plodding home from 
the long day at the library desk to her little 
cottage and crippled sister, at night, always 
made one feel the better and happier for 
meeting her. 

Mrs. Carr-Boldt’s days were crowded to 
the last instant, it was true; but what a 
farce it was, after all, Margaret said to her¬ 
self in all honesty, to humor her in her little 
favorite belief that she was a busy woman! 
Milliner, manicure, butler, chef, club, card- 
table, tea-table—these and a thousand 
things like them filled her day, and they 
might all be swept away in an hour, and 
leave no one the worse. Suppose her own 
summons came; there would be a little 
flurry throughout the great establishment, 
legal matters to settle, notes of thanks to 
be written for flowers. Margaret could 
imagine Victoria and Harriet, awed but 



MOTHER 191 

otherwise unaffected, home from school in 
midweek, and to be sent back before the 
next Monday. Their lives would go on 
unchanged, their mother had never buttered 
bread for them, never schemed for their 
boots and hats, never watched their work 
and play, and called them to her knees for 
praise and blame. Mr. Carr-Boldt would 
have his club, his business, his yacht, his 
motor-cars—he was well accustomed to liv¬ 
ing in cheerful independence of family claims. 

But life without Mother-! In a sick 

moment of revelation Margaret saw it. 
She saw them gathering in the horrible 
emptiness and silence of the house Mother 
had kept so warm and bright, she saw her 
father’s stooped shoulders and trembling 
hands, she saw Julie and Beck, red-eyed, 
white-cheeked, in fresh black—she seemed 
to hear the low-toned voices that would 
break over and over again so cruelly into 
sobs. What could they do—who could take 
up the work she laid down—who would 




i 9 2 mother 

watch and plan and work for them all, now? 
Margaret thought of the empty place at 
the table, of the room that, after all these 
years, was no longer “Mother’s room-” 

Oh, no—no—no!—She began to cry bit¬ 
terly in the dark. No, please God, they 
would hold her safe with them for many 
years. Mother should live to see some of 
the fruits of the long labor of love. She 
should know that with every fresh step in 
life, with every deepening experience, her 
children grew to love her better, turned to 
her more and more! There would be Christ¬ 
mases as sweet as the old ones, if not so gay; 
there would come a day—Margaret’s whole 
being thrilled to the thought—when little 
forms would run ahead of John and herself 
up the worn path, and when their children 
would be gathered in Mother’s experienced 
arms! Did life hold a more exquisite mo¬ 
ment, she wondered, than that in which she 
would hear her mother praise them! 

All her old castles in the air seemed cheap 







MOTHER 


193 

and tinselled tonight, beside these tender 
dreams that had their roots in the real 
truths of life. Travel and position, gowns 
and motor-cars, yachts and country houses, 
these things were to be bought in all their 
perfection by the highest bidder, and always 
would be. But love and character and 
service, home and the wonderful charge of 
little lives—the “pure religion breathing 
household laws” that guided and perfected 
the whole—these were not to be bought, 
they were only to be prayed for, worked 
for, bravely won. 

“God has been very good to me,” Mar¬ 
garet said to herself very seriously; and in 
her old childish fashion she made some new 
resolves. From now on, she thought, with 
a fervor that made it seem half accomplished, 
she would be a very different woman. If 
joy came, she would share it as far as she 
could; if sorrow, she would show her mother 
that her daughter was not all unworthy of 
her. To-morrow, she thought, she would 


MOTHER 


194 

go and see Julie. Dear old Ju, whose heart 
was so full of the little Margaret! Mar¬ 
garet had a sudden tender memory of the 
days when Theodore and Duncan and Rob 
were all babies in turn. Her mother would 
gather the little daily supply of fresh clothes 
from bureau and chest every morning, and 
carry the little bath-tub into the sunny 
nursery window, and sit there with only a 
bobbing downy head and waving pink fin¬ 
gers visible from the great warm bundle of 
bath apron. . . . Ju would be doing 

that now. 

And she had sometimes wished, or half 
formed the wish, that she and Bruce had 
been the only ones! Yes, came the sud¬ 
den thought, but it wouldn’t have been 
Bruce and Margaret, after all, it would have 
been Bruce and Charlie. 

Good God! That was what women did, 
then, when they denied the right of life 
to the distant, unwanted, possible little 
person! Calmly, constantly, in all placid 


MOTHER 


195 

philosophy and self-justification, they kept 
from the world—not only the troublesome 
new baby, with his tears and his illnesses, 
his merciless exactions, his endless claim on 
mind and body and spirit—but perhaps the 
glowing beauty of a Rebecca, the buoyant 
indomitable spirit of a Ted, the sturdy charm 
of a small Robert, whose grip on life, whose 
energy and ambition were as strong as 
Margaret’s own! 

Margaret stirred uneasily, frowned in the 
dark. It seemed perfectly incredible, it 
seemed perfectly impossible that if Mother 
had had only the two—and how many 
thousands of women didn’t have that!— 
she, Margaret, a pronounced and separate 
entity, travelled, ambitious, and to be the 
wife of one of the world’s great men, might 
not have been lying here in the summer 
night, rich in love and youth and beauty and 
her dreams! 

It was all puzzling, all too big for her to 
understand. But she could do what Mother 




MOTHER 


196 

did, just take the nearest duty and fulfil it, 
and sleep well, and rise joyfully to fresh effort. 

Margaret felt as if she would never sleep 
again. The summer night was cool, she 
was cramped and chilly; but still her thoughts 
raced on, and she could not shut her eyes. 
She turned and pressed her face resolutely 
into the pillow, and with a great sigh re¬ 
nounced the joys and sorrows, the lessons and 
the awakening that the long day had held. 

A second later there was a gentle rustle 
at the door. 

“Mark,” a voice whispered. “Can’t 
you sleep?” 

Margaret locked her arms tight about her 
mother, as the older woman knelt beside her. 

“Why, how cold you are, sweetheart!” 
her mother protested, tucking covers about 
her. “I thought I heard you sigh! I got 
up to lock the stairway door: Baby’s gotten 
a trick of walking in his sleep when he’s 
overtired. It’s nearly one o’clock, Markl 
What have you been doing?” 


MOTHER 197 

“Thinking/’ Margaret put her lips very 

close to her mother’s ear. “ Mother-” she 

stammered and stopped. Mrs. Paget kissed 
her. 

“Daddy and I thought so,” she said sim¬ 
ply; and further announcement was not 
needed. “ My darling little girl!” she added 
tenderly; and then, after a silence, “He is 
very fine, Mark, so unaffected, so gentle 
and nice with the boys. I—I think I’m 
glad, Mark. I lose my girl, but there’s no 
happiness like a happy marriage, dear.” 

“No, you won’t lose me, Mother,” Mar¬ 
garet said, clinging very close. “We hadn’t 
much time to talk, but this much we did 
decide. You see, John—John goes to Ger¬ 
many for a year, next July. So we thought 
—in June or July, Mother, just as Julie’s 
was! Just a little wedding like Ju’s. You 
see, that’s better than interrupting the 
term, or trying to settle down, when we’d 
have to move in July. And, Mother, I’m 
going to write Mrs. Carr-Boldt—she can get 



MOTHER 


198 

a thousand girls to take my place, her niece 
is dying to do it!—and I’m going to take my 
old school here for the term. Mr. Forbes 
spoke to me about it after church this morn¬ 
ing; they want me back. I want this year 
at home; I want to see more of Bruce and 
Ju, and sort of stand by darling little Beck! 
But it’s for you, most of all, Mother/’ said 
Margaret, with difficulty. “I’ve always 
loved you, Mother, but you don’t know how 

wonderful I think you are-” She broke 

off pitifully, “Ah, Mother!” 

For her mother’s arms had tightened 
convulsively about her, and the face against 
her own was wet. 

“Are you talking?” said Rebecca, rearing 
herself up suddenly, with a web of bright 
hair falling over her shoulder. “You said 
your prayers on Mark last night,” said she, 
reproachfully; “come over and say them on 
me to-night, Mother.” 


THE END 



I 




i 









THE TREASURE 














» 


TO 

IDA M. TARBELL 

WITH MANY HAPPY MEMORIES OF THE 
CONNECTICUT FARM 



CHAPTER I 







THE TREASURE 


CHAPTER I 

rZZIE, who happened to be the 
Salisbury’s one servant at the 
time, was wasteful. It was al¬ 
most her only fault, in Mrs. 
Salisbury’s eyes, for such trifles as her habit 
of becoming excited and “saucy,” in moments 
of domestic stress, or to ask boldly for other 
holidays than her alternate Sunday and 
Thursday afternoons, or to resent at all times 
the intrusion of any person, even her mistress, 
into her immaculate kitchen, might have been 
overlooked. Mrs. Salisbury had been keeping 
house in a suburban town for twenty years; 
she was not considered an exacting mistress. 
She was perfectly willing to forgive Lizzie 
what was said in the hurried hours before the 
company dinner or impromptu lunch, and to 








4 


The Treasure 


let Lizzie slip out for a walk with her sister 
in the evening, and to keep out of the kitchen 
herself as much as was possible. So much 
might be conceded to a girl who was honest 
and clean, industrious, respectable, and a fair 
cook. 

But the wastefulness was a serious matter. 
Mrs. Salisbury was a careful and an experi¬ 
enced manager; she resented waste; indeed, 
she could not afford to tolerate it. She liked 
to go into the kitchen herself every morning, 
to eye the contents of icebox and pantry, and 
decide upon needed stores. Enough butter, 
enough cold meat for dinner, enough milk for 
a nourishing soup, eggs and salad for luncheon 
—what about potatoes? 

Lizzie deliberately frustrated this house¬ 
wifely ambition. She flounced and muttered 
when other hands than her own were laid upon 
her icebox. She turned on rushing faucets, 
rattled dishes in her pan. Yet Mrs. Salisbury 
felt that she must personally superintend these 
matters, because Lizzie was so wasteful. The 
girl had not been three months in the Salis- 


The Treasure 


5 

bury family before all bills for supplies soared 
alarmingly. 

This was all wrong. Mrs. Salisbury fretted 
over it a few weeks, then confided her concern 
to her husband. But Kane Salisbury would 
not listen to the details. He scowled at the 
introduction of the topic, glanced restlessly at 
his paper, murmured that Lizzie might be 
“fired”; and, when Mrs. Salisbury had reso¬ 
lutely bottled up her seething discontent in¬ 
side of herself, she sometimes heard him mur¬ 
muring, “Bad—bad—management” as he sat 
chewing his pipe-stem on the dark porch or be¬ 
side the fire. 

Alexandra, the eighteen-year-old daughter 
of the house, was equally incurious and un¬ 
reasonable about domestic details. 

“But, honestly, Mother, you know you’re 
afraid of Lizzie, and she knows it,” Alexandra 
would declare gaily; “I can’t tell you how I’d 
manage her, because she’s not my servant, but 
I know I would do something!” 

Beauty and intelligence gave Alexandra, 
even at eighteen, a certain serene poise and 


6 


The Treasure 


self-reliance that lifted her above the old- 
fashioned topics of “trouble with girls,” and 
housekeeping, and marketing. Alexandra 
touched these subjects under the titles of 
“budgets,” “domestic science,” and “effi¬ 
ciency.” Neither she nor her mother recog¬ 
nized the old, homely subjects under their new 
names, and so the daughter felt a lack of in¬ 
terest, and the mother a lack of sympathy, that 
kept them from understanding each other. 
Alexandra, ready to meet and conquer all the 
troubles of a badly managed world, felt that 
one small home did not present a very terrible 
problem. Poor Mrs. Salisbury only knew that 
it was becoming increasingly difficult to keep 
a general servant at all in a family of five, and 
that her husband’s salary, of something a little 
less than four thousand dollars a year, did 
not at all seem the princely sum that they 
would have thought it when they were married 
on twenty dollars a week. 

From the younger members of the family, 
Fred, who was fifteen, and Stanford, three 
years younger, she expected, and got, no sym- 


The Treasure 


7 


pathy. The three young Salisburys found 
money interesting only when they needed it 
for new gowns, or matinee tickets, or tennis 
rackets, or some kindred purchase. They 
needed it desperately, asked for it, got it, spent 
it, and gave it no further thought. It meant 
nothing to them that Lizzie was wasteful. It 
was only to their mother that the girl’s slip¬ 
shod ways were becoming an absolute trial. 

Lizzie, very neat and respectful, would in¬ 
terfere with Mrs. Salisbury’s plan of a visit to 
the kitchen by appearing to ask for instructions 
before breakfast was fairly over. When the 
man of the house had gone, and before the 
children appeared, Lizzie would inquire: 

“Just yourselves for dinner, Mrs. Salis¬ 
bury ?” 

“Just ourselves. Let—me—see-” Mrs. 

Salisbury would lay down her newspaper, stir 
her cooling coffee. The memory of last night’s 
vegetables would rise before her; there must 
be baked onions left, and some of the corn. 

“There was some lamb left, wasn’t there?” 
she might ask. 



8 


The Treasure 


Amazement on Lizzie’s part. 

“That wasn’t such an awful big leg, Mrs. 
Salisbury. And the boys had Perry White in, 
you know. There’s just a little plateful left. 
I gave Sam the bones.” 

Mrs. Salisbury could imagine the plateful: 
small, neat, cold. 

“Sometimes I think that if you left the joint 
on the platter, Lizzie, there are scrapings, you 
know-” she might suggest. 

“I scraped it,” Lizzie would answer briefly, 
conclusively. 

“Well, that for lunch, then, for Miss Sandy 
and me,” Mrs. Salisbury would decide hastily. 
“I’ll order something fresh for dinner. Were 
there any vegetables left?” 

“There were a few potatoes, enough for 
lunch,” Lizzie would admit guardedly. 

“I’ll order vegetables, too, then!” And Mrs. 
Salisbury would sigh. Every housekeeper 
knows that there is no economy in ordering 
afresh for every meal. 

“And we need butter-” 

“Butter again! Those two pounds gone?” 




The Treasure 


9 


“There’s a little piece left, not enough, 
though. And I’m on my last cake of soap, and 
we need crackers, and vanilla, and sugar, un¬ 
less you’re not going to have a dessert, and 
salad oil-” 

“Just get me a pencil, will you?” This was 
as usual. Mrs. Salisbury would pencil a long 
list, would bite her lips thoughtfully, and sigh 
as she read it over. 

“Asparagus to-night, then. And, Lizzie, 
don’t serve so much melted butter with it as 
you did last time; there must have been a cup¬ 
ful of melted butter. And, another time, save 
what little scraps of vegetables there are left; 
they help out so at lunch-” 

“There wasn’t a saucerful of onions left last 
night,” Lizzie would assert, “and two cobs of 
corn, after I’d had my dinner. You couldn’t 
do much with those. And, as for butter on 
the asparagus”—Lizzie was very respectful, 
but her tone would rise aggrievedly—“it was 
every bit eaten, Mrs. Salisbury!” 

“Yes, I know. But we mustn’t let these 
young vandals eat us out of house and home, 




IO 


The Treasure 


you know,” the mistress would say, feeling as 
if she were doing something contemptibly 
small. And, worsted, she would return to her 
paper. “But I don’t care, we cannot afford 
it!” Mrs. Salisbury would say to herself, when 
Lizzie had gone, and very thoughtfully she 
would write out a check payable to “cash.” 
“I used to use up little odds and ends so de¬ 
liciously, years ago!” she sometimes reflected 
disconsolately. “And Kane always says we 
never live as well now as we did then! He 
always praised my dinners.” 

Nowadays Mr. Salisbury was not so well 
satisfied. Lizzie rang the changes upon 
roasted and fried meats, boiled and creamed 
vegetables, baked puddings and canned fruits 
contentedly enough. She made cup cake and 
sponge cake, sponge cake and cup cake all the 
year round. Nothing was ever changed, no 
unexpected flavor ever surprised the palates 
of the Salisbury family. May brought straw¬ 
berry shortcake, December cottage puddings, 
cold beef always made a stew; creamed cod¬ 
fish was never served without baked potatoes. 


The Treasure 


ii 


The Salisbury table was a duplicate of some 
millions of other tables, scattered the length 
and breadth of the land. 

“And still the bills go up!” fretted Mrs. 
Salisbury. 

“Well, why don’t you fire her, Sally?” her 
husband asked, as he had asked of almost 
every maid they had ever had—of lazy Annies, 
and untidy Selmas, and ignorant Katies. And, 
as always, Mrs. Salisbury answered patiently: 

“Oh, Kane, what’s the use? It simply 
means my going to Miss Crosby’s again, and 
facing that awful row of them, and begin¬ 
ning that I have three grown children, and no 
other help-” 

“Mother, have you ever had a perfect 
maid?” Sandy had asked earnestly years be¬ 
fore. Her mother spent a moment in reflec¬ 
tion, arresting the hand with which she was 
polishing silver. Alexandra was only sixteen 
then, and mother and daughter were bridging 
a gap when there was no maid at all in the 
Salisbury kitchen. 

“Well, there was Libby,” the mother an- 



12 


The Treasure 


swered at length, “the colored girl I had when 
you were born. She really was perfect, in 
a way. She was a clean darky, and such a 
cook! Daddy talks still of her fried chicken 
and blueberry pies! And she loved company, 
too. But, you see, Grandma Salisbury was 
with us then, and she paid a little girl to look 
after you, so Libby had really nothing but the 
kitchen and dining-room to care for. After¬ 
ward, just before Fred came, she got lazy and 
ugly, and I had to let her go. Canadian Annie 
was a wonderful girl, too,” pursued Mrs. 
Salisbury, “but we only had her two months. 
Then she got a place where there were no 
children, and left on two days’ notice. And 
when I think of the others!—the Hungarian 
girl who boiled two pairs of Fred’s little brown 
socks and darkened the entire wash, sheets and 
napkins and all! And the colored girl who 
drank, and the girl who gave us boiled rice for 
dessert whenever I forgot to tell her anything 
else! And then Dad and I never will forget 
the woman who put pudding sauce on his mut¬ 
ton—dear me, dear me!” And Mrs. Salisbury 


The Treasure 


13 


laughed out at the memory. “Between her not 
knowing one thing, and not understanding a 
word we said, she was pretty trying all 
around!” she presently added. “And, of 
course, the instant you have them really 
trained they leave; and that’s the end of that! 
One left me the day Stan was born, and an¬ 
other—and she was a nice girl, too—simply 
departed when you three were all down with 
scarlet fever, and left her bed unmade, and 
the tea cup and saucer from her breakfast 
on the end of the kitchen table! Luckily we 
had a wonderful nurse, and she simply took 
hold and saved the day.” 

“Isn’t it a wonder that there isn’t a training 
school for house servants?” Sandy had in¬ 
quired, youthful interest in her eye. 

“There’s no such thing,” her mother assured 
her positively, “as getting one who knows her 
business! And why ? Why, because all the 
smart girls prefer to go into factories, and 
slave away for three or four dollars a week, 
instead of coming into good homes! Do 
Pearsall and Thompson ever have any diffi- 


H 


The Treasure 


culty in getting girls for the glove factory? 
Never! There’s a line of them waiting, a 
block long, every time they advertise. But 
you may make up your mind to it, dear, if 
you get a good cook, she’s wasteful or she’s 
lazy, or she’s irritable, or dirty, or she won’t 
wait on table, or she slips out at night, and 
laughs under street lamps with some man or 
other! She’s always on your mind, and she’s 
always an irritation.” 

“It just shows what a hopelessly stupid 
class you have to deal with, Mother,” the 
younger Sandy had said. But at eighteen, she 
was not so sure. 

Alexandra frankly hated housework, and 
she did not know how to cook. She did not 
think it strange that it was hard to find a clever 
and well-trained young woman who would 
gladly spend all her time in housework and 
cooking for something less than three hundred 
dollars a year. Her eyes were beginning to be 
opened to the immense moral and social ques¬ 
tions that lie behind the simple preference of 
American girls to work for men rather than 


The Treasure 


15 


for women. Household work was women’s 
sphere, Sandy reasoned, and they had made 
it a sphere insufferable to other women. Some¬ 
thing was wrong. 

Sandy was too young, and too mentally in¬ 
dependent, to enter very sympathetically into 
her mother’s side of the matter. The younger 
woman’s attitude was tinged with affectionate 
contempt, and when the stupidity of the maid, 
or the inconvenience of having no maid at all, 
interfered with the smooth current of her life, 
or her busy comings and goings, she became 
impatient and intolerant. 

“Other people manage!” said Alexandra. 

“Who, for instance?” demanded her 
mother, in calm exasperation. 

“Oh, everyone—the Bernards, the Water¬ 
mans ! Doilies and finger bowls, and Elsie in 
a cap and apron!” 

“But Doctor and Mrs. Bernard are old peo¬ 
ple, dear, and the Watermans are three busi¬ 
ness women—no lunch, no children, very little 
company!” 

“Well, Grace Elliot, then!” 


16 The Treasure 

“With two maids, Sandy. That’s a very 
different matter!” 

“And is there any reason why we shouldn’t 
have two?” asked Sandy, with youthful logic. 

“Ah, well, there you come to the question 
of expense, dear!” And Mrs. Salisbury dis¬ 
missed the subject with a quiet air of triumph. 

But of course the topic came up again. It 
is the one household ghost that is never laid 
in such a family. Sometimes Kane Salisbury 
himself took a part in it. 

“Do you mean to tell me,” he once de¬ 
manded, in the days of the dreadfully incom¬ 
petent maids who preceded Lizzie, “that it is 
becoming practically impossible to get a good 
general servant?” 

“Well, I wish you’d try it yourself,” his 
wife answered, grimly quiet. “It’s just about 
wearing me out! I don’t know what has be¬ 
come of the good old maid-of-all-work,” she 
presently pursued, with a sigh, “but she has 
simply vanished from the face of the earth. 
Even the greenest girls fresh from the other 
side begin to talk about having the washing 


The Treasure 


17 


put out, and to have extra help come in to 
wash windows and beat rugs! I don’t know 
what we’re coming to—you teach them to tell 
a blanket from a sheet, and how to boil coffee, 
and set a table, and then away they go to get 
more money somewhere. Dear me! Your 
father’s mother used to have girls who had 

the wash on the line before eight o’clock-” 

“Yes, but then Grandma’s house was 
simpler,” Sandy contributed, a little doubt¬ 
fully. “You know, Grandma never put on 

any style, Mother-” 

“Her house was always one of the most 

comfortable, most hospitable-” 

“Yes, I know, Mother!” Alexandra per¬ 
sisted eagerly. “But Fanny never had to an¬ 
swer the door, and Grandma used to let her 
leave the tablecloth on between meals— 
Grandma told me so herself!—and no fussing 
with doilies, or service plates under the soup 
plates, or glass saucers for dessert. And 
Grandma herself used to help wipe dishes, or 
sometimes set the table, and make the beds, 
if there was company-” 






i8 


The Treasure 


“That may be,” Mrs. Salisbury had the sat¬ 
isfaction of answering coldly. “Perhaps she 
did, although I never remember hearing her 
say so. But my mother always had colored 
servants, and I never saw her so much as dust 
the piano!” 

“I suppose we couldn’t simplify things, 
Sally? Cut out some of the extra touches?” 
suggested the head of the house. 

Mrs. Salisbury merely shook her head, com¬ 
pressing her lips firmly. It was quite difficult 
enough to keep things “nice,” with two grow¬ 
ing boys in the family, without encountering 
such opposition as this. A day or two later 
she went into New Troy, the nearest big city, 
and came back triumphantly with Lizzie. 

And at first Lizzie really did seem perfec¬ 
tion. It was some weeks before Mrs. Salis¬ 
bury realized that Lizzie was not truthful; ab¬ 
solutely reliable in money matters, yet Lizzie 
could not be believed in the simplest state¬ 
ment. Tasteless oatmeal, Lizzie glibly as¬ 
severated, had been well salted; weak coffee, 
or coffee as strong as brown paint, were the 


The Treasure 


19 


fault of the pot. Lizzie, rushing through din¬ 
ner so that she might get out; Lizzie throwing 
out cold vegetables that “weren’t worth sav¬ 
ing”; Lizzie growing snappy and noisy at the 
first hint of criticism, somehow seemed worse 
sometimes than no servant at all. 

“I wonder—if we moved into New Troy, 
Kane,” Mrs. Salisbury mused, “and got one 
of those wonderful modern apartments, with 
a gas stove, and a dumbwaiter, and hardwood 
floors, if Sandy and I couldn’t manage every¬ 
thing? With a woman to clean and dinners 
downtown now and then, and a waitress in 
for occasions.” 

“And me jumping up to change the salad 
plates, Mother!” Alexandra put in briskly. 
“And a pile of dishes to do every night!” 

“Gosh, let’s not move into the city -” 

protested Stanford. “No tennis, no canoe, no 
baseball!” 

“And we know everyone in River Falls, 
we’d have to keep coming out here for par¬ 
ties !” Sandy added. 

“Well,” Mrs. Salisbury sighed, “I admit 



20 


i 

The Treasure 


that it is too much of a problem for me!” she 

• 

said. “I know that I married your father on 
twenty dollars a week,” she told the children 
severely, “and we lived in a dear little cottage, 
only eighteen dollars a month, and I did all 
my own work! And never in our lives have 
we lived so well. But the minute you get in¬ 
experienced help, your bills simply double, and 
inexperienced help means simply one annoy¬ 
ance after another. I give it up!” 

“Well, I’ll tell you, Mother,” Alexandra 
offered innocently; “perhaps we don’t sys¬ 
tematize enough ourselves. It ought to be all 
so well arranged and regulated that a girl 
would know what she was expected to do, and 
know that you had a perfect right to call 
her down for wasting or slighting things. 
Why couldn’t women—a bunch of women, 
say-” 

“Why couldn’t they form a set of house¬ 
hold rules and regulations ?” her mother inter¬ 
cepted smoothly. “Because—it’s just one of 
the things that you young, inexperienced peo¬ 
ple can talk very easily about,” she interrupted 



The Treasure 


21 


herself to say with feeling, “but it never seems 
to occur to any one of you that every house¬ 
hold has its different demands and regulations. 
The market fluctuates, the size of a family 
changes—fixed laws are impossible! No. Liz¬ 
zie is no worse than lots of others, better than 
the average. I shall hold on to her!” 

“Mrs. Sargent says that all these unneces¬ 
sary demands have been instituted and in¬ 
sisted upon by women,” said Alexandra. “She 
says that the secret of the whole trouble is 
that women try to live above their class, and 
make one servant appear to do the work of 
three-” 

The introduction of Mrs. Sargent’s name 
was not a happy one. 

“Ellen Sargent,” said Mrs. Salisbury icily, 
“is not a lady herself, in the true sense of the 
word, and she does very well to talk about 
class distinctions! She was his stenographer 
when Cyrus Sargent married her, and the 
daughter of a tannery hand. Now, just be¬ 
cause she has millions, I am not going to be 



22 


The Treasure 


impressed by anything Ellen Sargent does or 
says!” 

'‘Mother, I don’t think she meant quality 
by ‘class,’ ” Sandy protested. “Everyone 
knows that Grandfather was General Stan¬ 
ford, and all that! But I think she meant, 
in a way, the money side of it, the financial 
division of people into classes!” 

“We won’t discuss her,” decided Mrs. Salis¬ 
bury majestically. “The money standard is 
one I am not anxious to judge my friends 
by!” 

Still, with the rest of the family, Mrs. 
Salisbury was relieved when Lizzie, shortly 
after this, decided of her own accord to ac¬ 
cept a better-paid position. “Unless, Mama 
says, you’d care to raise me to seven a week,” 
said Lizzie, in parting. 

“No, no, I cannot pay that,” Mrs. Salisbury 
said firmly and Lizzie accordingly left. 

Her place was taken by a middle-aged 
French woman, and whipped cream and the 
subtle flavor of sherry began to appear in the 
Salisbury bills of fare. Germaine had no idea 


The Treasure 


23 


whatever of time, and Sandy perforce must 
set the table whenever there was a company 
dinner afoot, and lend a hand with the last 
preparations as well. The kitchen was never 
really in order in these days, but Germaine 
cooked deliciously, and Mrs. Salisbury gave 
eight dinners and a club luncheon during the 
month of her reign. Then the French woman 
grew more and more irregular as to hours, 
and more utterly unreliable as to meals; some¬ 
times the family fared delightfully, sometimes 
there was almost nothing for dinner. Ger¬ 
maine seemed to fade from sight, not entirely 
of her own volition, not really discharged; 
simply she was gone. A Norwegian girl 
came next, a good-natured, blundering crea¬ 
ture whose English was just enough to utterly 
confuse herself and everyone else. Freda’s 
mistakes were not half so funny in the mak¬ 
ing as Alexandra made them in anecdotes 
afterward; and Freda was given to weird 
chanting, accompanying herself with a banjo, 
throughout the evenings. Finally a blonde 
giant known as “Freda’s cousin” came to see 


24 


The Treasure 


her, and Kane Salisbury, followed by his 
elated and excited boys, had to eject Freda’s 
cousin early in the evening, while Freda wept 
and chattered to the ladies of the house. After 
that the cousin called often to ask for her, but 
Freda had vanished the day after this event, 
and the Salisburys never heard of her again. 

They tried another Norwegian, then a 
Polack, then a Scandinavian. Then they had 
a German man and wife for a week, a couple 
who asserted that they would work, without 
pay, for a good home. This was a most un¬ 
comfortable experience, unsuccessful from the 
first instant. Then came a low-voiced, good- 
natured South American negress, Marthe, not 
much of a cook, but willing and strong. 

July was mercilessly hot that year, thirty- 
one burning days of sunshine. Mrs. Salisbury 
was not a very strong woman, and she had a 
great many visitors to entertain. She kept 
Marthe, because the colored woman did not 
resent constant supervision, and an almost 
hourly change of plans. Mrs. Salisbury did 
almost all of the cooking herself, fussing for 


The Treasure 


25 


hours in the hot kitchen over the cold meats 
and salads and ices that formed the little in¬ 
formal cold suppers to which the Salisburys 
loved to ask their friends on Saturday and 
Sunday nights. 

Alexandra helped fitfully. She would put 
her pretty head into the kitchen doorway, per¬ 
haps to find her mother icing cake. 

“Listen, Mother; I’m going over to Con’s. 
She’s got that new serve down to a fine point! 
And I’ve done the boys’ room and the guest 
room; it’s all ready for the Cutters. And I 
put towels and soap in the bathroom, only 
you’ll have to have Marthe wipe up the floor 
and the tub.” 

“You’re a darling child,” the mother would 
say gratefully. 

“Darling nothing!” And Sandy, with her 
protest, would lay a cool cheek against her 
mother’s hot one. “Do you have to stay out 
here, Mother?” she would ask resentfully. 
“Can’t the Culled Lady do this?” . 

“Well, I left her to watch it, and it 
burned,” Mrs. Salisbury would say, “so now 


26 


The Treasure 


it has to be pared and frosted. Such a bother! 
But this is the very last thing, dear. You run 
along; I’ll be out of here in two minutes!” 

But it was always something more than two 
minutes. Sometimes even Kane Salisbury was 
led to protest. 

“Can’t we eat less, dear? Or differently? 
Isn’t there some simple way of managing this 
week-end supper business? Now, Brewer— 
Brewer manages it awfully well. He has his 
man set out a big cold roast or two, cheese, 
and coffee, and a bowlful of salad, and beer. 
He’ll get a fruit pie from the club sometimes, 
or pastries, or a pot of marmalade-” 

“Yes, indeed, we must try to simplify,” 
Mrs. Salisbury would agree brightly. But 
after such a conversation as this she would 
go over her accounts very soberly indeed. 
“Roasts—cheeses—fruit pies!” she would say 
bitterly to herself. “Why is it that a man will 
spend as much on a single lunch for his 
friends as a woman is supposed to spend on 
her table for a whole week, and then ask her 
what on earth she has done with her money!” 



The Treasure 


27 


Kane, I wish you would go over my ac¬ 
counts, ” she said one evening, in desperation. 
“Just suggest where you would cut down!” 

Mr. Salisbury ran his eye carelessly over 
the pages of the little ledger. 

“Roast beef, two-forty?” he presently read 
aloud, questioningly. 

“Twenty-two cents a pound,” his wife an¬ 
swered simply. But the man’s slight frown 
deepened. 

“Too much—too much!” he said, shaking 
his head. 

Mrs. Salisbury let him read on a moment, 
turn a page or two. Then she said, in a dead 
calm: 

“Do you think my roasts are too big, 
Kane ?” 

“Too big? On the contrary,” her husband 
answered briskly, “I like a big roast. Some¬ 
times ours are skimpy-looking before they’re 
even cut!” 

“Well!” Mrs. Salisbury said triumphantly. 

Her smile apprised her husband that he was 


28 


The Treasure 


trapped, and he put down the account book in 
natural irritation. 

“Well, my dear, it's your problem!” he said 
unsympathetically, returning to his newspaper. 
‘‘I run my business, I expect you to run yours! 
If we can’t live on our income, we’ll have to 
move to a cheaper house, that’s all, or take 
Stanford out of school and put him to work. 
Dickens says somewhere—and he never said 
a truer thing!'’ pursued the man of the house 
comfortably, “that, if you spend a sixpence 
less than your income every week, you are 
rich. If you spend a sixpence more, you never 
may expect to be anything but poor!” 

Mrs. Salisbury did not answer. She took 
up her embroidery, whose bright colors 
blurred and swam together through the tears 
that came to her eyes. 

“Never expect to feel anything but poor!” 
she echoed sadly to herself. “I am sure I 
never do! Things just seem to run away with 
me; I can’t seem to get hold of them. I don’t 
see where it’s going to end!” 

“Mother,” said Alexandra, coming in from 


The Treasure 


29 


the kitchen, “Marthe says that all that deli¬ 
cious chicken soup is spoiled. The idiot, she 
says that you left it in the pantry to cool, and 
she forgot to put it on the ice! Now, what 
shall we do, just skip soup, or get some beef 
extract and season it up?” 

“Skip soup,” said Mr. Salisbury cheerfully. 

“We can’t very well, dear,” said his wife 
patiently, “because the dinner is just soup and 
a fish salad, and one needs the hot start in a 
perfectly cold supper. No. I’ll go out.” 

“Can’t you just tell me what to do?” asked 
Alexandra impatiently. 

But her mother had gone. The girl sat on 
the arm of the deserted chair, swinging an idle 
foot. 

“I wish I could cook!” she fretted. 

“Can’t you, Sandy?” her father asked. 

“Oh, some things! Rabbits and fudge and 
walnut wafers! But I mean that I wish I 
understood sauces and vegetables and season¬ 
ing, and getting things cooked all at the same 
moment! I don’t mean that I’d like to do it, 
but I would like to know how. Now, Mother’ll 


30 


The Treasure 


scare up some perfectly delicious soup for din¬ 
ner, cream of something or other, and I could 
do it perfectly well, if only I knew how!’’ 

“Suppose I paid you a regular salary, 

Sandy-” her father was beginning, with 

the untiring hopefulness of the American fa¬ 
ther. But the girl interrupted vivaciously: 

“Dad, darling, that isn’t practical! I’d love 
it for about two days. Then we’d settle right 
down to washing dishes, and setting tables, 
and dusting and sweeping, and wiping up 
floors—horrors, horrors, horrors!” 

She left her perch to take in turn an arm 
of her father’s chair. 

“Well, what’s the solution, pussy?” asked 
Kane Salisbury, keenly appreciative of the 
nearness of her youth and beauty. 

“It isn't that ” said Sandy decidedly. “Of 
course,” she pursued, “the Gregorys get along 
without a maid, and use a fireless cooker, and 
drink cereal coffee, but admit, darling, that 
you’d rather have me useless and frivolous as 
I am!—than Gertrude or Florence or Wini¬ 
fred Gregory! Why, when Floss was mar- 



The Treasure 


3 1 


ried, Dad, Gertrude played the .piano, for mu¬ 
sic, and for refreshments they had raspberry 
ice-cream and chocolate layer cake!” 

“Well, I like chocolate layer cake,” ob¬ 
served her father mildly. “I thought that was 
a very pretty wedding; the sisters in their 
light dresses-” 

“Dimity dresses at a wedding!” Alexandra 
reproached him, round-eyed. “And they 
are so boisterously proud of the fact that 
they live on their father’s salary,” she went 
on, arranging her own father’s hair fastidi¬ 
ously; “it’s positively offensive the way they 
bounce up to change plates and tell you how 
to make the neck of mutton appetizing, or the 
heart of a cow, or whatever it is! And their 
father pushes the chairs back, Dad, and helps 
roll up the napkins—I’d die if you ever tried 
it!” 

“But they all work, too, don’t they?” 

“Work? Of course they work! And every 
cent of it goes into the bank. Winnie and 
Florence are buying gas shares, and Gertrude 



32 


The Treasure 


means to have a year’s study in Europe, if 
you please!” 

'That doesn’t sound very terrible,” said 
Kane Salisbury, smiling. But some related 
thought darkened his eyes a moment later. 
"You wouldn’t have much gas stock if I was 
taken, Pussy,” said he. 

"No, darling, and let that be a lesson to you 
not to die!” his daughter said blithely. "But 
I could work, Dad,” she added more seriously, 
"if Mother didn’t mind so awfully. Not in 
the kitchen, but somewhere. I’d love to work 
in a settlement house.” 

"Now, there you modern girls are,” her 
father said. "Can’t bear to clear away the 
dinner plates in your own houses, yet you’ll 
cheerfully suggest going to live in the filthiest 
parts of the city, working, as no servant is 
ever expected to work, for people you don’t 
know!” 

"I know it’s absurd,” Sandy agreed, smil¬ 
ing. Her answer was ready somewhere in her 
mind, but she could not quite find it. “But, 
you see, that’s a new problem,” she presently 


The Treasure 


33 


offered, “that’s ours to-day, just as managing 
your house was Mother’s when she married 
you. Circumstances have changed. I couldn’t 
ever take up the kitchen question just as it 
presents itself to Mother. I—people my age 
don’t believe in a servant class. They just 
believe in a division of labor, all dignified. If 
some girl I knew, Grace or Betty, say, came 
into our kitchen—and that reminds me!” she 
broke off suddenly. 

“Of what?” 

“Why, of something Owen—Owen Sargent 
was saying a few days ago. His mother’s 
quite daffy about establishing social centers 
and clubs for servant girls, you know, and 
she’s gotten into this new thing, a sort of col¬ 
lege for servants. Now I’ll ask Owen about 
it. I’ll do that to-morrow. That’s just what 
I’ll do!” 

“Tell me about it,” her father said. But 
Alexandra shook her head. 

“I don’t honestly know anything about it, 
Dad. But Owen had a lot of papers and a 
sort of prospectus. His mother was wishing 


34 


The Treasure 


that she could try one of the graduates, but 
she keeps six or seven house servants, and it 
wouldn’t be practicable. But I’ll see. I never 
thought of us! And I’ll bring Owen home to 
dinner to-morrow. Is that all right, Mother?” 
she asked, as her mother came back into the 
room. 

“Owen? Certainly, dear; we’re always glad 
to see him,” Mrs. Salisbury said, a shade too 
casually, in a tone well calculated neither to 
alarm nor encourage, balanced to keep events 
uninterruptedly in their natural course. But 
Alexandra was too deep in thought to notice 
a tone. 

“You’ll see—this is something entirely new, 
and just what we need!” she said gaily. 


CHAPTER II 





CHAPTER II 


HE constant visits of Owen Sar¬ 
gent, had he been but a few years 
older, and had Sandy been a few 
years older, would have filled 
Mrs. Salisbury’s heart with a wild maternal 
hope. As it was, with Sandy barely nineteen, 
and Owen not quite twenty-two, she felt 
more tantalizing discomfort in their friendship 
than satisfaction. Owen was a dear boy, queer, 
of course, but fine in every way, and Sandy 
was quite the prettiest girl in River Falls; but 
it was far too soon to begin to hope that they 
would do the entirely suitable and acceptable 
thing of falling in love with each other. “That 
would be quite too perfect!” thought Mrs. 
Salisbury, watching them together. 

No; Owen was too rich to be overlooked by 
all sorts of other girls, scrupulous and un¬ 
scrupulous. Every time he went with his 

37 




38 


The Treasure 


mother for a week to Atlantic City or New 
York, Mrs. Salisbury writhed in apprehension 
of the thousand lures that must be spread on 
all sides about his lumbering feet. He was 
just the sweet, big, simple sort to be trapped 
by some little empty-headed girl, some little 
marplot clever enough to pretend an interest 
in the prison problem, or the free-milk prob¬ 
lem, or some other industrial problem in which 
Owen had seen fit to interest himself. And 
her lovely, dignified Sandy, reflected the 
mother, a match for him in every way, beauti¬ 
ful, good, clever, just the woman to win him, 
by her own charm and the charms of children 
and home, away from the somewhat unnatural 
interests with which he had surrounded him¬ 
self, must sit silent and watch him throw 
himself away. 

Sandy, of course, had never had any idea 
of Owen in this light, of that her mother was 
quite sure. Sandy treated him as she did her 
own brothers, frankly, despotically, delight¬ 
fully. And perhaps it was wiser, after all, 
not to give the child a hint, for it was evident 


The Treasure 


39 


that the shy, gentle Owen was absolutely at 
home and happy in the Salisbury home; noth¬ 
ing would be gained by making Sandy feel 
self-conscious and responsible now. 

Mrs. Salisbury really did not like Owen 
Sargent very well, although his money made 
her honestly think she did. He had a wide, 
pleasant, but homely face, and an aureole of 
upstanding yellow hair, and a manner as un¬ 
affected as might have been expected from the 
child of his plain old genial father, and his 
mother, the daughter of a tanner. He lived 
alone, with his widowed mother, in a pleasant, 
old-fashioned house, set in park-like grounds 
that were the pride of River Falls. His 
mother often asked waitresses’ unions and 
fresh-air homes to make use of these grounds 
for picnics, but Mrs. Salisbury knew that the 
house belonged to Owen, and she liked to 
dream of a day when Sandy’s babies should 
tumble on those smooth lawns, and Sandy, 
erect and beautifully furred, should bring her 
own smart little motor car through that tall 
iron gateway. 


40 


The Treasure 


These dreams made her almost effusive in 
her manner to Owen, and Owen, who was no 
fool, understood perfectly what she was think¬ 
ing of him; he understood his own energetic, 
busy mother; and he understood Sandy’s 
mother, too. He knew that his money made 
him well worth any mother’s attention. 

But, like her mother, he believed Sandy too 
young to have taken any cognizance of it. He 
thought the girl liked him as she liked anyone 
else, for his own value, and he sometimes 
dreamed shyly of her pleasure in suddenly 
realizing that Mrs. Owen Sargent would be a 
rich woman, the mistress of a lovely home, the 
owner of beautiful jewels. 

Both, however, were mistaken in Sandy. 
Her blue, blue eyes, so oddly effective under 
the silky fall of her straight, mouse-colored 
hair, were very keen. She knew exactly why 
her mother suggested that Owen should bring 
her here or there in the car, “Daddy and the 
boys and I will go in our old trap, just be¬ 
hind you!” She knew that Owen thought 
that her quick hand over his, in a game of 


The Treasure 


4i 


hearts, the thoughtful stare of her demure 
eyes, across the dinner table, the help she ac¬ 
cepted so casually, climbing into his big car— 
were all evidences that she was as unconscious 
of his presence as Stan was. But in reality 
the future for herself of which Sandy confi¬ 
dently dreamed was one in which, in all inno¬ 
cent complacency, she took her place beside 
Owen as his wife. Clumsy, wild-haired, bash¬ 
ful he might be at twenty-two, but the far¬ 
sighted Sandy saw him ten years, twenty years 
later, well groomed, assured of manner, de¬ 
votedly happy in his home life. She consid¬ 
ered him entirely unable to take care of him¬ 
self, he needed a good wife. And a good, 
true, devoted wife Sandy knew she would be, 
fulfilling to her utmost power all his lonely, 
little-boy dreams of birthday parties and 
Christmas revels. 

To do her justice, she really and deeply 
cared for him. Not with passion, for of that 
as yet she knew nothing, but with a real and 
absorbing affection. Sandy read “Love in a 
Valley” and the “Sonnets from the Portu- 


42 


The Treasure 


guese” in these days, and thought of Owen. 
Now and then her well-disciplined little heart 
surprised her by an unexpected flutter in his 
direction. 

She duly brought him home with her to din¬ 
ner on the evening after her little talk with her 
parents. Owen was usually to be found 
browsing about the region where Sandy 
played marches twice a week for sewing 
classes in a neighborhood house. They often 
met, and Sandy sometimes went to have tea 
with his mother, and sometimes, as to-day, 
brought him home with her. 

Owen had with him the letters, pamphlets 
and booklet issued by the American School of 
Domestic Science, and after dinner, while the 
Salisbury boys wrestled with their lessons, the 
three others and Owen gathered about the 
drawing-room table, in the late daylight, and 
thoroughly investigated the new institution 
and its claims. Sandy wedged her slender 
little person in between the two men. Mrs. 
Salisbury sat near by, reading what was 
handed to her. The older woman’s attitude 


The Treasure 


43 


was one of dispassionate unbelief; she smiled 
a benign indulgence upon these newfangled 
ideas. But in her heart she felt the stirring 
of feminine uneasiness and resentment. It 
was her sacred region, after all, into which 
these young people were probing so light- 
heartedly. These were her secrets that they 
were exploiting; her methods were to be dis¬ 
paraged, tossed aside. 

The booklet, with its imposing A.S.D.S. 
set out fair and plain upon a brown cover, was 
exhaustive. Its frontispiece was a portrait of 
one Eliza Slocumb Holley, founder of the 
school, and on its back cover it bore the vig¬ 
netted photograph of a very pretty graduate, 
in apron and cap, with her broom and feather 
duster. In between these two pictures were 
pages and pages of information, dozens of 
pictures. There were delightful long perspec¬ 
tives of model kitchens, of vegetable gardens, 
orchards, and dairies. There were pictures of 
girls making jam, and sterilizing bottles, and 
arranging trays for the sick. There were girls 
amusing children and making beds. There 


44 


The Treasure 


were glimpses of the model flats, built into the 
college buildings, with gas stoves and dumb¬ 
waiters. And there were the usual pictures 
of libraries, and playgrounds, and tennis 
courts. 

“Such nice-looking girls!” said Sandy. 

“Oh, Mother says that they are splendid 
girls,” Owen said, bashfully eager, “just the 
kind that go in for trained nursing, you know, 
or stenography, or bookkeeping.” 

“They must be a solid comfort, those girls,” 
said Mrs. Salisbury, leaning over to read cer¬ 
tain pages with the others. “ ‘First year/ ” 
she read aloud. “ ‘Care of kitchen, pantry, 
and utensils—fire-making—disposal of refuse 
—table-setting—service—care of furniture— 
cooking with gas—patent sweepers—sweeping 
—dusting—care of silver—bread—vegetables 
—puddings-’ ” 

“Help!” said Sandy. “It sounds like the 
essence of a thousand Mondays! No one 
could possibly learn all that in one year.” 

“It’s a long term, eleven months,” her fa¬ 
ther said, deeply interested. “That’s not all 



The Treasure 


45 

of the first year, either. But it’s all practical 
enough.” 

“What do they do the last year, Mother ?” 

Mrs. Salisbury adjusted her glasses. 

“ ‘Third year,’ ” she read obligingly. “ ‘All 
soups, sauces, salads, ices and meats. Infant 
and invalid diet. Formal dinners, arranged by 
season. Budgets. Arrangement of work for 
one maid. Arrangement of work for two 
maids. Menus, with reference to expense, 
with reference to nourishment, with reference 
to attractiveness. Chart of suitable meals for 
children, from two years up. Table manners 
for children. Classic stories for children at 
bedtime. Flowers, their significance upon the 
table. Picnics-’ ” 

“But, no; there’s something beyond that,” 
Owen said. Mrs. Salisbury turned a page. 

“ ‘Fourth Year. Post-graduate, not obli¬ 
gatory/ ” she read. “ ‘Unusual German, 
Italian, Russian and Spanish dishes. Transla¬ 
tion of menus. Management of laundries, ho¬ 
tels and institutions. Work of a chef. Work 
of subordinate cooks. Ordinary poisons. 



46 


The Treasure 


Common dangers of canning. Canning for 
the market. Professional candy-making- 

“Can you beat it!” said Owen. 

“It’s extraordinary!” Mrs. Salisbury con¬ 
ceded. Her husband asked the all-important 
question : 

“What do you have to pay for one of these 
paragons ?” 

“It’s all here,” Mrs. Salisbury said. But 
she was distracted in her search of a scale of 
prices by the headlines of the various pages. 
“ ‘Rules Governing Employers/ ” she read, 
with amusement. “Isn’t this too absurd? 
‘Employers of graduates of the A.S.D.S. 
will kindly respect the conditions upon which, 
and only upon which, contracts are based.’ ” 
She glanced down the long list of items. “ ‘A 
comfortably furnished room,’ ” she read at 
random, “ ‘weekly half holiday—access to 
nearest public library or family library—op¬ 
portunity for hot bath at least twice weekly— 
two hours if possible for church attendance 
on Sunday—annual two weeks’ holiday, or two 
holidays of one week each—full payment of 






The Treasure 


47 


salary in advance, on the first day of every 
month’—what a preposterous idea!” Mrs. 
Salisbury broke off to say. “How is one to 
know that she wouldn’t skip off on the sec¬ 
ond?” 

“In that case the school supplies you with 
another maid for the unfinished term,” ex¬ 
plained Sandy, from the booklet. 

“Well-” the lady was still a little unsat¬ 

isfied. “As if they didn’t have privileges 
enough now!” she said. “It’s the same old 
story: we are supposed to be pleasing them, 
not they us!” 

“ ‘In a family where no other maid is 
kept,’ ” read Alexandra, “ ‘a graduate will 
take entire charge of kitchen and dining room, 
go to market if required, do ordinary family 
washing and ironing, will clean bathroorS 
daily, and will clean and sweep every other 
room in the house, and the halls, once thor¬ 
oughly every week. She will be on hand to 
answer the door only one afternoon every 
week, besides Sunday— 


> >> 


“What!” ejaculated Mrs. Salisbury. 




48 


The Treasure 


“I should like to know who does it on other 
days!” Alexandra added amazedly. 

“Don’t you think that’s ridiculous, Kane?” 
his wife asked eagerly. 

“We-el,” the man of the house said tem¬ 
perately, “I don’t know that I do. You see, 
otherwise the girl has a string tied on her all 
the time. People in our position, after all, 
needn’t assume that we’re too good to open 
our own door-” 

“That’s exactly it, sir,” Owen agreed 
eagerly; “Mother says that that’s one of the 
things that have upset the whole system for so 
long! Just the convention that a lady can’t 
open her own door-” 

“But we haven’t found the scale of wages 

yet-” Mrs. Salisbury interrupted sweetly 

but firmly. Alexandra, however, resumed the 
recital of the duties of one maid. 

“ ‘She will not be expected to assume the 
care of young children,’ ” she read, “ nor to 
sleep in the room with them. She will not be 
expected to act as chaperone or escort at night. 
She ’ ” 






The Treasure 


49 


“It doesn't say that, Sandy!” 

“Oh, yes, it does! And, listen! ( Note. 
Employers are respectfully requested to main¬ 
tain as formal an attitude as possible toward 
the maid. Any intimacy, or exchange of con¬ 
fidences, is especially to be avoided’ ”—Alex¬ 
andra broke off to laugh, and her mother 
laughed with her, but indignantly. 

“Insulting!” she said lightly. “Does any¬ 
one suppose for an instant that this is a seri¬ 
ous experiment?” 

“Come, that doesn’t sound very ridiculous 
to me,” her husband said. “Plenty of women 
do become confidential with their maids, don’t 
they?” 

“Dear me, how much you do know about 
women!” Alexandra said, kissing the top of 
her father’s head. “Aren’t you the bad old 
man!” 

“No; but one might hope that an institution 
of this kind would put the American servant 
in her place,” Mrs. Salisbury said seriously, 
“instead of flattering her and spoiling her be¬ 
yond all reason. I take my maid’s receipt for 


50 The Treasure 

salary in advance; I show her the bathroom 
and the library—that’s the idea, is it? Why, 
she might be a boarder! Next, they’ll be ask¬ 
ing for a place at the table and an hour’s prac¬ 
tice on the piano.” 

“Well, the original American servant, the 
*neighbor’s girl,’ who came in to help during 
the haying season, and to put up the pre¬ 
serves, probably did have a place at the table,” 
Mr. Salisbury submitted mildly. 

“Mother thinks that America never will 
have a real servant class,” Owen added uncer¬ 
tainly; “that is, until domestic service is ele¬ 
vated to the—the dignity of office work, don’t 
you know? Until it attracts the nicer class of 
women, don’t you know? Mother says that 
many a good man’s fear of old age would be 
lightened, don’t you know?—if he felt that, in 
case he lost his job, or died, his daughters 
could go into good homes, and grow up under 
the eye of good women, don’t you know? ” 

“Very nice, Owen, but not very practical!” 
Mrs. Salisbury said, with her indulgent, 
motherly smile. “Oh, dear me, for the good 


The Treasure 


51 


old days of black servants, and plenty of 
them!” she sighed. For though Mrs. Salis¬ 
bury had been born some years after the days 
of plenty known to her mother on her grand¬ 
father’s plantation, before the war, she was 
accustomed to detailed recitals of its gran¬ 
deurs. 

“Here we are!” said Alexandra, finding a 
particular page that was boldly headed 
“Terms.” 

“ 'For a cook and general worker, no 
other help/ ” she read, “ 'thirty dollars per 
month-’ ” 

“Not so dreadful,” her father said, pleas¬ 
antly surprised. 

“But, listen, Dad! Thirty dollars for a 
family of two, and an additional two dollars 
and a half monthly for each other member of 
the family. That would make ours thirty- 
seven dollars and a half, wouldn’t it?” she 
computed swiftly. 

“Awful! Impossible!” Mrs. Salisbury said 
instantly, almost in relief. The discussion 
made her vaguely uneasy. What did these 



52 


The Treasure 


casual amateurs know about the domestic 
problem, anyway? Kane, who was always 
anxious to avoid details; Sandy, all youthful 
enthusiasm and ignorance, and Owen Sargent, 
quoting his insufferable mother? For some 
moments she had been fighting an impulse to 
soothe them all with generalities. “Never 
mind; it’s always been a problem, and it al¬ 
ways will be! These new schemes are all very 
well, but don’t trouble your dear heads about 
it any longer!” 

Now she sank back, satisfied. The whole 
thing was but a mad, utopian dream. Thirty- 
seven dollars indeed! “Why, one could get 
two good servants for that!” thought Mrs. 
Salisbury, with the same sublime faith with 
which she had told her husband, in poorer 
days, years ago, that, if they could but afford 
her, she knew they could get a “fine girl” for 
three dollars a week. The fact that the “fine 
girl” did not apparently exist did not at all 
shake Mrs. Salisbury’s confidence that she 
could get two “good girls.” Her hope in the 
untried solution rose with every failure. 


The Treasure 


53 


“Thirty-seven is steep,” said Kane Salis¬ 
bury slowly. “However! What do we pay 
now, Mother?” 

“Five a week,” said that lady inflexibly. 

“But we paid Germaine more,” said Alexan¬ 
dra eagerly. “And didn’t you pay Lizzie six 
and a half?” 

“The last two months I did, yes,” her 
mother agreed unwillingly. “But that comes 
only to twenty-six or seven,” she added. 

“But, look here,” said Owen, reading. 
“Here it says: ‘Note. Where a graduate is 
required to manage on a budget, it is com¬ 
puted that she saves the average family from 
two to seven dollars weekly on food and fuel 
bills.’ ” 

“Now that begins to sound like horse 
sense,” Mr. Salisbury began. But the mistress 
of the house merely smiled, and shook a dubi¬ 
ous head, and the younger members of the 
family here created a diversion by reminding 
their sister’s guest, with animation, that he had 
half-asked them to go out for a short ride in 
his car. Alexandra accordingly ran for a veil 


54 


The Treasure 


and the young quartette departed with much 
noise, Owen stuffing his pamphlets and booklet 
into his pocket before he went. 

Mr. and Mrs. Salisbury settled down con¬ 
tentedly to double Canfield, the woman crush¬ 
ing out the last flicker of the late topic with a 
placid shake of the head, when the man asked 
her for her honest opinion of the American 
School of Domestic Science. “I don’t truly 
think it’s at all practical, dear,” said Mrs. 
Salisbury regretfully. “But we might watch 
it for a year or two and go into the question 
again some time, if you like. Especially if 
some one else has tried one of these maids, 
and we have had a chance to see how it goes!” 

The very next morning Mrs. Salisbury 
awakened with a dull headache. Hot sunlight 
was streaming into the bedroom, an odor of 
coffee, drifting upstairs, made her feel sud¬ 
denly sick. Her first thought was that she 
could not have Sandy’s two friends to lunch¬ 
eon, and she could not keep a shopping and 
tea engagement with a friend of her own! 



The Treasure 


55 


She might creep through the day somehow, 
but no more. 

She dressed slowly, fighting dizziness, and 
went slowly downstairs, sighing at the sight 
of disordered music and dust in the dining¬ 
room, the sticky chafing-dish and piled plates 
in the pantry. In the kitchen was a litter of 
milk bottles, saucepans, bread and crumbs and 
bread knife encroaching upon a basket of 
spilled berries, egg shells and melting bacon. 
The blue sides of the cofifee-pot were stained 
where the liquid and grounds had bubbled 
over it. Marthe was making toast, the long 
fork jammed into a plate hole of the range. 
Mrs. Salisbury thought that she had never 
seen sunlight so mercilessly hot and bright 
before- 

“Rotten coffee!” said Mr. Salisbury cheer¬ 
fully, when his wife took her place at the 
table. 

“And she never uses the poacher!” Alex¬ 
andra added reproachfully. “And she says 
that the cream is sour because the man leaves 
it at half-past four, right there in the sunniest 



56 


The Treasure 


corner of the porch—can’t he have a box or 
something, Mother?” 

“Gosh, I wouldn’t care what she did if she’d 
get a move on,” said Stanford frankly. “She’s 
probably asleep out there, with her head in 
the frying pan!” 

Mrs. Salisbury went into the kitchen again. 
She had to pause in the pantry because the 
bright squares of the linoleum, and the brassy 
faucets, and the glare of the geraniums out¬ 
side the window semed to rush together for a 
second. 

Marthe was on the porch, exchanging a few 
gay remarks with the garbage man before 
shutting the side door after him. The big 
stove was, roaring hot, a thick odor of boiling 
clothes showed that Marthe was ready for her 
cousin Nancy, the laundress, who came once a 
week. A saucepan deeply gummed with cereal 
was soaking beside the hissing and smoking 
frying pan. Mrs. Salisbury moved the frying 
pan, and the quick heat of the coal fire rushed 
up at her face- 

“Why,” she whispered, opening anxious 



The Treasure 


57 


eyes after what seemed a long time, “who 
fainted ?” 

A wheeling and rocking mass of light and 
shadow resolved itself into the dining-room 
walls, settled and was still. She felt the soft 
substance of a sofa pillow under her head, the 
hard lump that was her husband’s arm sup¬ 
porting her shoulders. 

“That’s it—now she’s all right!” said Kane 
Salisbury, his kind, concerned face just above 
her own. Mrs. Salisbury shifted heavy, 
languid eyes, and found Sandy. 

“Darling, you fell!” the daughter whis¬ 
pered. White-lipped, pitiful, with tears still 
on her round cheeks, Sandy was fanning her 
mother with a folded newspaper. 

“Well, how silly of me!” Mrs. Salisbury 
said weakly. She sighed, tried too quickly to 
sit up, and fainted quietly away again. 

This time she opened her eyes in her own 
bed, and was made to drink something sharp 
and stinging, and directed not to talk. While 
her husband and daughter were hanging up 


58 


The Treasure 


things, and reducing the tumbled room to or¬ 
der, the doctor arrived. 

“Dr. Hollister, I call this an imposition!” 
protested the invalid smilingly. “I have been 
doing a little too much, that’s all! But don’t 
you dare say the word rest-cure to me again!” 

But Doctor Hollister did not smile; there 
was no smiling in the house that day. 

“Mother may have to go away,” Alexandra 
told anxious friends, very sober, but com¬ 
posed. “Mother may have to take a rest- 
cure,” she said a day or two later. 

“But you won’t let them send me to a hos¬ 
pital again, Kane?” pleaded his wife one even¬ 
ing. “I almost die of lonesomeness, wonder¬ 
ing what you and the children are doing! 
Couldn’t I just lie here? Marthe and Sandy 
can manage somehow, and I promise you I 
truly won’t worry, just lie here like a queen!” 

“Well, perhaps we’ll give you a trial,” 
smiled Kane Salisbury, very much enjoying an 
hour of quiet, at his wife’s bedside. “But 
don’t count on Marthe. She’s going.” 

“Marthe is?” Mrs. Salisbury only leaned 


The Treasure 


59 


a little more heavily on the strong arm that 
held her, and laughed comfortably. “I refuse 
to concern myself with such sordid matters/’ 
she said. “But why?” 

“Because I’ve got a new girl, hon.” 

“You have!” She shifted about to stare at 
him, aroused by his tone. Light came. 
“You’ve not gotten one of those college cooks, 
have you, Kane?” she demanded. “Oh, Kane! 
Not at thirty-seven dollars a month! Oh, you 
have, you wicked, extravagant boy!” 

“Cheaper than a trained nurse, petty!” 

Mrs. Salisbury was still shaking a scan¬ 
dalized head, but he could see the pleasure and 
interest in her eyes. She sank back in her 
pillows, but kept her thin fingers gripped 
tightly over his. 

“How you do spoil me, Tip!” The name 
took him back across many years to the little 
eighteen-dollar cottage and the days before 
Sandy came. He looked at his wife’s frail 
little figure, the ruffled frills that showed un¬ 
der her loose wrapper, at throat and elbows. 
There was something girlish still about her 


6o 


The Treasure 


hanging dark braid, her big eyes half visible in 
the summer twilight. 

“Well, you may depend upon it, you’re in 
for a good long course of spoiling now, Miss 
Sally!” said he. 


CHAPTER III 



CHAPTER III 


USTINE HARRISON, graduate 
servant of the American School 
of Domestic Science, arrived the 
next day. If Mrs. Salisbury was 
half consciously cherishing an expectation of 
some one as crisp and cheerful as a trained 
nurse might have been, she was disappointed. 
Justine was simply a nice, honest-looking 
American country girl, in a cheap, neat, brown 
suit and a dreadful hat. She smiled appre¬ 
ciatively when Alexandra showed her her at¬ 
tractive little room, unlocked what Sandy saw 
to be a very orderly trunk, changed her hot 
suit at once for the gray gingham uniform, 
and went to Mrs. Salisbury’s room with great 
composure, for instructions. In passing, Alex¬ 
andra—feeling the situation to be a little odd, 
yet bravely, showed her the back stairway and 

63 





64 


The Treasure 


the bathroom, and murmured something about 
books being in the little room off the drawing¬ 
room downstairs. Justine smiled brightly. 

“Oh, I brought several books with me,” she 
said, “and I subscribe to two weekly maga¬ 
zines and one monthly. So usually I have 
enough to read.” 

“How do you do? You look very cool and 
comfortable, Justine. Now, you’ll have to 
find your own way about downstairs. You’ll 
see the coffee next to the bread box, and the 
brooms are in the laundry closet. Just do the 
best you can. Mr. Salisbury likes dry toast 
in the morning—eggs in some way. We get 
eggs from the milkman; they seem fresher. 
But you have to tell him the day before. And 
I understood that you’ll do most of the wash¬ 
ing? Yes. My old Nancy was here day be¬ 
fore yesterday, so there’s not much this 
week.” It was in some such disconnected 
strain as this that Mrs. Salisbury welcomed 
and initiated the new maid. 

Justine bowed reassuringly. 

“I’ll find everything, Madam. And do you 


The Treasure 


6 5 

wish me to manage and to market for awhile 
until you are about again ?” 

The invalid sent a pleading glance to Sandy. 

“Oh, I think my daughter will do that,” she 
said. 

“Oh, now, why, Mother?” Sandy asked, in 
affectionate impatience. “I don’t begin to 
know as much about it as Justine probably 
does. Why not let her?” 

“If Madam will simply tell me what sum 
she usually spends on the table,” said Justine, 
“I will take the matter in hand.” 

Mrs. Salisbury hesitated. This was the 
very stronghold of her authority. It seemed 
terrible to her, indelicate, to admit a stranger. 

“Well, it varies a little,” she said restlessly. 
“I am not accustomed to spending a set sum.” 
She addressed her daughter. “You see, I’ve 
been paying Nancy every week, dear,” said 
she, “and the other laundry. And little things 
come up-” 

“What sum would be customary, in a fam¬ 
ily this size?” Alexandra asked briskly of the 
graduate servant. 



66 


The Treasure 


Justine was business-like. 

“Seven dollars for two persons is the 
smallest sum we are allowed to handle,” she 
said promptly. “After that each additional 
person calls for three dollars weekly in our 
minimum scale. Four or five dollars a week 
per person, not including the maid, is the 
usual allowance.” 

“Mercy! Would that be twenty dollars for 
table alone?” the mistress asked. “It is never 
that now, I think. Perhaps twice a week,” she 
said, turning to Alexandra, “your father gives 
me five dollars at the breakfast table-” 

“But, Mother, you telephone and charge at 
the market, and Lewis & Sons, too, don’t 
you?” Sandy asked. 

“Well, yes, that’s true. Yes, I suppose it 
comes to fully twenty-five dollars a week, 
when you think of it. Yes, it probably comes 
to more. But it never seems so much, some¬ 
how. Well, suppose we say twenty-five-” 

“Twenty-five, I’ll tell Dad.” Alexandra 
confirmed it briskly. 

“I used to keep accounts, years ago,” Mrs. 




The Treasure 


67 


Salisbury said plaintively. “Your father-” 

and again she turned to her daughter, as if to 
make this revelation of her private affairs less 
distressing by so excluding the stranger. 
“Your father has always been the most gener¬ 
ous of men,” she said; “he always gives me 
more money if I need it, and I try to do the 
best I can.” And a little annoyed, in her weak¬ 
ness and helplessness by this business talk, she 
lay back on her pillow, and closed her eyes. 

“Twenty-five a week, then!” Alexandra 
said, closing the talk by jumping up from a 
seat on her mother’s bed, and kissing the in¬ 
valid’s eyes in parting. Justine, who had re¬ 
mained standing, followed her down to the 
kitchen, where, with cheering promptitude, the 
new maid fell upon preparations for dinner. 
Alexandra rather bashfully suggested what 
she had vaguely planned for dinner; Justine 
nodded intelligently at each item; presently 
Alexandra left her, busily making butter-balls, 
and went upstairs to report. 

“Nothing sensational about her,” said Sandy 
to her mother, “but she takes hold! She’s got 



68 


The Treasure 


some bleaching preparation of soda or some¬ 
thing drying on the sink-board; she took the 
shelf out of the icebox the instant she opened 
it, and began to scour it while she talked. 
She’s got a big blue apron on, and she’s hung 
a nice clean white one on the pantry door.” 

There was nothing sensational about the 
tray which Justine carried up to the sick room 
that evening—nothing sensational in the din¬ 
ner which was served to the diminished fam¬ 
ily. But the Salisbury family began that 
night to speak of Justine as the “Treasure.” 

“Everything hot and well seasoned and 
nicely served,” said the man of the house in 
high satisfaction, “and the woman looks like a 
servant, and acts like one. Sandy says she’s 
turning the kitchen upside down, but, I say, 
give her her head!” 

The Treasure, more by accident than de¬ 
sign, was indeed given her head in the weeks 
that followed, for Mrs. Salisbury steadily de¬ 
clined into a real illness, and the worried fam¬ 
ily was only too glad to delegate all the do¬ 
mestic problems to Justine. The invalid’s con- 


The Treasure 


09 

dition, from “nervous breakdown” became 
“nervous prostration,” and August was made 
terrible for the loving little group that watched 
her by the cruel fight with typhoid fever into 
which Mrs. Salisbury’s exhausted little body 
was drawn. Weak as she was physically, her 
spirit never failed her; she met the over¬ 
whelming charges bravely, rallied, sank, ral¬ 
lied again and lived. Alexandra grew thin, 
if prettier than ever, and Owen Sargent grew 
bold and big and protecting to meet her need. 
The boys were “angels,” their sister said, 
helpful, awed and obedient, but the children’s 
father began to stoop a little and to show 
gray in the thick black hair at his temples. 

Soberly, sympathetically, Justine steered her 
own craft through all the storm and confu¬ 
sion of the domestic crisis. Trays appeared 
and disappeared without apparent effort. Hot 
and delicious meals were ready at the ap¬ 
pointed hours, whether the pulse upstairs went 
up or down. Tradespeople were paid; there 
was always ice; there was always hot water. 
The muffled telephone never went unanswered, 


7 ° 


The Treasure 


the doctor never had to ring twice for ad¬ 
mittance. If fruit was sent up to the invalid, 
it was icy cold; if soup was needed, it ap¬ 
peared, smoking hot, and guiltless of even one 
floating pinpoint of fat. 

Alexandra and the trained nurse always 
found the kitchen the same: orderly, aired, si¬ 
lent, with Justine, a picture of domestic effi¬ 
ciency, sitting by the open window, or on the 
shady side porch, shelling peas or peeling ap¬ 
ples, or perhaps wiping immaculate glasses 
with an immaculate cloth at the sink. The 
ticking clock, the shining range, the sunlight 
lying in clean-cut oblongs upon the bright 
linoleum, Justine’s smoothly braided hair and 
crisp percales, all helped to form a picture 
wonderfully restful and reassuring in troubled 
days. 

Alexandra, tired with a long vigil in the 
sick room, liked to slip down late at night, to 
find Justine putting the last touches to the 
day’s good work. A clean checked towel 
would be laid over the rising, snowy mound 
of dough; the bubbling oatmeal was locked in 


The Treasure 


7 i 


the fireless cooker, doors were bolted, window 
shades drawn. There was an admirable pre¬ 
cision about every move the girl made. 

The two young women liked to chat to¬ 
gether, and sometimes, when some important 
message took her to Justine’s door in the 
evening, Alexandra would linger, pleasantly 
affected by the trim little apartment, the roses 
in a glass vase, Justine’s book lying open-faced 
on the bed, or her unfinished letter waiting on 
the table. For all exterior signs, at these 
times, she might have been a guest in the 
house. 

Promptly, on every Saturday evening, the 
Treasure presented her account book to Mr. 
Salisbury. There was always a small balance, 
sometimes five dollars, sometimes one, but 
Justine evidently had well digested Dickens’ 
famous formula for peace of mind. 

“You’re certainly a wonder, Justine!” said 
the man of the house more than once. “How 
do you manage it?” 

“Oh, I cut down in dozens of ways,” the 
girl returned, with her grave smile. “You 


72 


The Treasure 


don’t notice it, but I know. You have kidney 
stews, and onion soups, and cherry pies, in¬ 
stead of melons and steaks and ice-cream, 
that’s all!” 

“And everyone just as well pleased,” he 

said, in real admiration. “I congratulate you.” 

« 

“It’s only what we are all taught at col¬ 
lege,” Justine assured him. “I’m just doing 
what they told me to! It’s my business.” 

“It’s pretty big business, and it’s been wait¬ 
ing a long while,” said Kane Salisbury. 

When Mrs. Salisbury began to get well, she 
began to get very hungry. This was plain 
sailing for Justine, and she put her whole heart 
into the dainty trays that went upstairs three 
times a day. While she was enjoying them, 
Mrs. Salisbury liked to draw out her clever 
maid, and the older woman and the young one 
had many a pleasant talk together. Justine 
told her mistress that she had been country- 
born and bred, and had grown up with a coun¬ 
try girl’s longing for nice surroundings and 
education of the better sort. 


The Treasure 


73 


“My name is not Justine at all,” she said 
smilingly, “nor Harrison, either, although I 
chose it because I have cousins of that name. 
We are all given names when we go to col¬ 
lege and take them with us. Until the work 
is recognized, as it must be some day, as dig¬ 
nified and even artistic, we are advised to sink 
our own identities in this way.” 

“You mean that Harrison isn’t your name?” 
Mrs. Salisbury felt this to be really a little 
alarming, in some vague way. 

“Oh, no! And Justine was given me as a 
number might have been.” 

“But what is your name?” The question 
fell from Mrs. Salisbury as naturally as an 
“Ouch!” would have fallen had somebody 
dropped a lighted match on her hand. “I had 
no idea of that!” she went on artlessly. “But 
I suppose you told Mr. Salisbury?” 

The luncheon was finished, and now Justine 
stood up, and picked up the tray. 

“No. That’s the very point. We use our 
college names,” she reiterated simply. “Will 










74 


The Treasure 


you let me bring you up a little more custard, 
Madam?” 

“No, thank you,” Mrs. Salisbury said, after 
a second’s pause. She looked a little thought¬ 
ful as Justine walked away. There is no real 
reason why one’s maid should not wear an 
assumed name, of course. Still- 

“What a ridiculous thing that college must 
be!” said Mrs. Salisbury, turning comfortably 
in her pillows. “But she certainly is a splen¬ 
did cook!” 

About this point, at least, there was no argu¬ 
ment. Justine did not need cream or sherry, 
chopped nuts or mushroom sauces to make 
simple food delicious. She knew endless ways 
in which to serve food; potatoes became a 
nightly surprise, macaroni was never the same, 
rice had a dozen delightful roles. Because the 
family enjoyed her maple custard or almond 
cake, she did not, as is the habit with cooks, 
abandon every other flavoring for maple or 
almond. She was following a broader sched¬ 
ule than that supplied by the personal tastes 



The Treasure 


75 


of the Salisburys, and she went her way se¬ 
renely. 

Not so much as a teaspoonful of cold 
spinach was wasted in these days. Justine’s 
“left-over” dishes were quite as good as any¬ 
thing else she cooked; her artful combinations, 
her garnishes of pastry, her illusive seasoning, 
her enveloping and varied sauces disguised and 
transformed last night’s dinner into a real 
feast to-night. 

The Treasure went to market only twice a 
week, on Saturdays and Tuesdays. She 
planned her meals long beforehand, with the 
aid of charts brought from college, and paid 
cash for everything she bought. She always 
carried a large market basket on her arm on 
these trips, and something in her trim, strong 
figure and clean gray gown, as she started off, 
appealed to a long-slumbering sense of house¬ 
holder’s pride in Mr. Salisbury. It seemed 
good to him that a person who worked so hard 
for him and for his should be so bright and 
contented looking, should like her life so well. 


76 


The Treasure 


i 


Late in September Mrs. Salisbury came 
downstairs again to a spotless drawing-room 
and a dining-room gay with flowers. Dinner 
was a little triumph, and after dinner she was 
escorted to a deep chair, and called upon to 
admire new papers and hangings, cleaned rugs 
and a newly polished floor. 

“You are wonderful, wonderful people, 
every one of you!” said the convalescent, smil¬ 
ing eyes roving about her. “Grass paper, 
Kane, and such a dear border!” she said. 
“And everything feeling so clean! And my 
darling girl writing letters and seeing people 
all these weeks! And my boys so good! And 
dear old Daddy carrying the real burden for 
everyone—what a dreadfully spoiled woman I 
am! And Justine—come here a minute, Jus¬ 
tine-” 

The Treasure, who was clearing the dining¬ 
room table, came in, and smiled at the pretty 
group, mother and father, daughter and sons, 
all rejoicing in being well and together again. 

“I don’t know how I am ever going to thank 
you, Justine,” said Mrs. Salisbury, with a little 



The Treasure 


77 


emotion. She took the girl’s hand in both her 
transparent white ones. “Do believe that I 
appreciate it,” she said. “It has been a com¬ 
fort to me, even when I was sickest, even when 
I apparently didn’t know anything, to know 
that you were here, that everything was run¬ 
ning smoothly and comfortably, thanks to you. 
We could not have managed without you!” 

Justine returned the finger pressure warmly, 
also a little stirred. 

“Why, it’s been a real pleasure,” she said 
a little huskily. She had to accept a little 
chorus of thanks from the other members of 
the family before, blushing very much and 
smiling, too, she went back to her work. 

“She really has managed everything,” Kane 
Salisbury told his wife later. “She handles 
all the little monthly bills, telephone and gas 
and so on; seems to take it as a matter of 
course that she should.” 

“And what shall I do now, Kane? Go on 
that way, for a while anyway?” asked his 
wife. 

“Oh, by all means, dear! You must take 


78 


The Treasure 


things easy for a while. By degrees you can 
take just as much or as little as you want, 
with the managing.” 

“You dear old idiot,” the lady said tenderly, 
“don’t worry about that! It will all come 
about quite naturally and pleasantly.” 

Indeed, it was still a relief to depend heav¬ 
ily upon Justine. Mrs. Salisbury was quite 
bewildered by the duties that rose up on every 
side of her; Sandy’s frocks for the fall, the 
boys’ school suits, calls that must be made, 
friends who must be entertained, and the open¬ 
ing festivities of several clubs to which she 
belonged. 

She found things running very smoothly 
downstairs, there seemed to be not even the 
tiniest flaw for a critical mistress to detect, 
and the children had added a bewildering num¬ 
ber of new names to their lists of favorite 
dishes. Justine was asked over and over again 
for her Manila curry, her beef and kidney pie, 
her scones and German fruit tarts, and for a 
brown and crisp and savory dish in which the 
mistress of the house recognized, under the 


The Treasure 


79 


title of chou farci, an ordinary cabbage as 
a foundation. 

“Oh, let’s not have just chickens or beef,” 
Sandy would plead when a company dinner 
was under discussion. “Let’s have one of 
Justine’s fussy dishes. Leave it to Justine!” 

For the Treasure obviously enjoyed com¬ 
pany dinner parties, and it was fascinating to 
Sandy to see how methodically, and with what 
delightful leisure, she prepared for them. Two 
or three days beforehand her cake-making, sil¬ 
ver-polishing, sweeping and cleaning were well 
under way, and the day of the event itself was 
no busier than any other day. 

Yet it was on one of these occasions that 
Mrs. Salisbury first had what she felt was 
good reason to criticize Justine. During a 
brief absence from home of both boys, their 
mother planned a rather formal dinner. Four 
of her closest friends, two couples, were asked, 
and Owen Sargent was invited by Sandy to 
make the group an even eight. This was as 
many as the family table accommodated com¬ 
fortably, and seemed quite an event. Ordi- 


8 o 


The Treasure 


narily the mistress of the house would have 
been fussing for some days beforehand, in her 
anxiety to have everything go well, but now, 
with Justine’s brain and Justine’s hands in 
command of the kitchen end of affairs, she 
went to the other extreme, and did not give 
her own and Sandy’s share of the preparations 
a thought until the actual day of the dinner. 

For, as was stipulated in her bond, except 
for a general cleaning once a week, the Treas¬ 
ure did no work downstairs outside of the din- 
ing-rodm and kitchen, and made no beds at 
any time. This meant that the daughter of the 
house must spend at least an hour every morn¬ 
ing in bed-making, and perhaps another fifteen 
minutes in that mysteriously absorbing busi¬ 
ness known as “straightening” the living room. 
Usually Sandy was very faithful to these du¬ 
ties; more, she whisked through them cheer¬ 
fully, in her enthusiastic eagerness that the 
new domestic experiment should prove a suc¬ 
cess. 

But for a morning or two before this par¬ 
ticular dinner she had shirked her work. Per- 


The Treasure 


81 


haps the novelty of it was wearing off a little. 
There was a tennis tournament in progress at 
the Burning Woods Country Club, two miles 
away from River Falls, and Sandy, who was 
rather proud of her membership in this very 
smart organization, did not want to miss a mo¬ 
ment of it. Breakfast was barely over before 
somebody’s car was at the door to pick up 
Miss Salisbury, who departed in a whirl of 
laughter and a flutter of bright veils, to be 
gone, sometimes, for the entire day. 

She had gone in just this way on the morn¬ 
ing of the dinner, and her mother, who had 
quite a full program of her own for the 
morning, had had breakfast in bed. Mrs. 
Salisbury came downstairs at about ten o’clock 
to find the dining-room airing after a sweep¬ 
ing; curtains pinned back, small articles cov¬ 
ered with a dust cloth, chairs at all angles. 
She went on to the kitchen, where Justine was 
beating mayonnaise. 

“Don’t forget chopped ice for the shaker, 
the last thing,” Mrs. Salisbury said, adding, 
with a little self-conscious rush, “And, oh, by 


82 


The Treasure 


the way, Justine, I see that Miss Alexandra 
has gone off again, without touching the liv¬ 
ing room. Yesterday I straightened it a little 
bit, but I have two club meetings this morn¬ 
ing, and I’m afraid I must fly. If—if she 
comes in for lunch, will you remind her of it?” 

“Will she be back for lunch? I thought she 
said she would not,” Justine said, in honest 
surprise. 

“No; come to think of it, she won’t,” her 
mother admitted, a little flatly. “She put her 
room and her brothers’ room in order,” she 
added inconsequently. 

Justine did not answer, and Mrs. Salisbury 
went slowly out of the kitchen, annoyance ris¬ 
ing in her heart. It was all very well for 
Sandy to help out about the house, but this in¬ 
flexible idea of holding her to it was nonsense! 

Ruffled, she went up to her room. Justine 
had carried away the breakfast tray, but there 
were towels and bath slippers lying about, a 
litter of mail on the bed, and Mr. Salisbury’s 
discarded linen strewn here and there. The 
dressers were in disorder, window curtains 


The Treasure 


S3 


were pinned back for more air, and the cover¬ 
ings of the twin beds thrown back and trailing 
on the floor. Fifteen minutes’ brisk work 
would have straightened the whole, but Mrs. 
Salisbury could not spare the time just then. 
The morning was running away with alarm¬ 
ing speed; she must be dressed for a meeting 
at eleven o’clock, and, like most women of her 
age, she found dressing a slow and trouble¬ 
some matter; she did not like to be hurried 
with her brushes and cold creams, her ruffles 
and veil. 

The thought of the unmade beds did not 
really trouble her when, trim and dainty, she 
went off in a friend’s car to the club at eleven 
o’clock, but when she came back, nearly two 
hours later, it was distinctly an annoyance to 
find her bedroom still untouched. She was 
tired then, and wanted her lunch; but instead 
she replaced her street dress with a loose house 
gown, and went resolutely to work. 

Musing over her solitary luncheon, she 
found the whole thing a little absurd. There 
was still the drawing-room to be put in order, 


8 4 


The Treasure 


and no reason in the world why Justine should 
not do it. The girl was not overworked, and 
she was being paid thirty-seven dollars and 
fifty cents every month! Justine was big and 
strong, she could toss the little extra work off 
without any effort at all. 

She wondered why it is almost a physical 
impossibility for a nice woman to ask a maid 
the simplest thing in the world, if she is fairly 
certain that that maid will be ungracious about 
it. 

“Dear me!” thought Mrs. Salisbury, eating 
her chop and salad, her hot muffin and tart 
without much heart to appreciate these delica¬ 
cies, “How much time I have spent in my life, 
going through imaginary conversations with 
maids! Why couldn’t I just step to the pantry 
door and say, in a matter-of-fact tone, T’m 
afraid I must ask you to put the sitting-room 
in order, Justine. Miss Sandy has apparently 
forgotten all about it. I’ll see that it doesn’t 
occur again.’ And I could add—now that I 
think of it—T will pay you for your extra 


The Treasure 85 

time, if you like, and if you will remind me 
at the end of the month.’ ” 

“Well, she may not like it, but she can’t re¬ 
fuse,” was her final summing up. She went 
out to the kitchen with a deceptive air of com¬ 
posure. 

Justine’s occupation, when Mrs. Salisbury 
found her, strengthened the older woman’s 
resolutions. The maid, in a silent and spotless 
kitchen, was writing a letter. Sheets of paper 
were strewn on the scoured white wood of the 
kitchen table; the writer, her chin cupped in 
her hand, was staring dreamily out of the 
kitchen window. She gave her mistress an ab¬ 
sent smile, then laid down her pen and stood 
up. 

“I’m writing here,” she explained, “so that 
I can catch the milkman for the cream.” 

Mrs. Salisbury knew that it was useless to 
ask if everything was in readiness for the 
evening’s event. From where she stood she 
could see piles of plates already neatly ranged 
in the warming oven, peeled potatoes were 
soaking in ice water in a yellow bowl, and the 


86 


The Treasure 


parsley that would garnish the big platter was 
ready, crisp and fresh in a glass of water. 

“Well, you look nice and peaceful,” smiled 
the mistress. “I am just going to dress for a 
little tea, and I may have to look in at the 
opening of the Athenaeum Club,” she went on, 
fussing with a frill at her wrist, “so I may be 
as late as five. But I’ll bring some flowers 
when I come. Miss Alexandra will probably 
be at home by that time, but if she isn't—if 
she isn’t, perhaps you would just go in and 
straighten the living room, Justine? I put 
things somewhat in order yesterday, and 
dusted a little, but, of course, things get scat¬ 
tered about, and it needs a little attention. She 
may of course be back in time to do it-” 

Her voice drifted away into casual silence. 
She looked at Justine expectantly, confidently. 
The maid flushed uncomfortably. 

“I’m sorry,” she said frankly. “But that’s 
against one of our rules, you know. I am not 
supposed to-” 

“Not ordinarily, I understand that,” Mrs. 




The Treasure 87 

Salisbury agreed quickly. “But in an emer¬ 
gency-” 

Again she hesitated. And Justine, with the 
maddening gentleness of the person prepared 
to carry a point at all costs, answered again: 

“It’s the rule. I’m sorry; but I am not sup¬ 
posed to.” 

“I should suppose that you were in my 
house to make yourself useful to me,” Mrs. 
Salisbury said coldly. She used a tone of quiet 
dignity; but she knew that she had had the 
worst of the encounter. She was really a little 
dazed by the firmness of the rebuff. 

“They make a point of our keeping to the 
letter of the law,” Justine explained. 

“Not knowing what my particular needs 
are, nor how I like my house to be run, is that 
it?” the other woman asked shrewdly. 

“Well-” Justine hung upon an em¬ 

barrassed assent. “But perhaps they won’t be 
so firm about it as soon as the school is really 
established,” she added eagerly. 

“No; I think they will not!” Mrs. Salisbury 
agreed with a short laugh, “inasmuch as they 




88 


The Treasure 


cannot, if they ever hope to get any foothold 
at all!” 

And she left the kitchen, feeling that in the 
last remark at least she had scored, yet very 
angry at Justine, who made this sort of war¬ 
fare necessary. 

“If this sort of thing keeps up, I shall sim¬ 
ply have to let her go!” she said. 

But she was trembling, and she came to a 
full stop in the front hall. It was madden¬ 
ing; it was unbelievable; but that neglected 
half hour of work threatened to wreck her 
entire day. With every fiber of her being in 
revolt, she went into the sitting-room. 

This was Alexandra’s responsibility, after 
all, she said to herself. And, after a moment’s 
indecision, she decided to telephone her daugh¬ 
ter at the Burning Woods Club. 

“Hello, Mother,” said Alexandra, when a 
page had duly informed her that she was 
wanted at the telephone. Her voice sounded 
a little tired, faintly impatient. “What is it, 
Mother?” 

“Why, I ought to go to Mary Bell’s tea, 


The Treasure 


89 


dearie, and I wanted just to look in at the 

Athenaeum-” Mrs. Salisbury began, a little 

inconsequently. “How soon do you expect to 
be home?” she broke off to ask. 

“I don’t know,” said Sandy lifelessly. 

“Are you coming back with Owen?” 

“No,” Sandy said, in the same tone. “I’ll 
come back with the Prichards, I guess, or with 
one of the girls. Owen and the Brice boy are 
taking Miss Satterlee for a little spin up 
around Feather Rock.” 

“Miss who?” But Mrs. Salisbury knew 
very well who Miss Satterlee was. A pretty 
and pert and rowdyish little dancer, she had 
managed to captivate one or two of the promi¬ 
nent matrons of the club, and was much in evi¬ 
dence there, to the great discomfort of the 
more conservative Sandy and her intimates. 

Now Sandy’s mother ended the conversa¬ 
tion with a few very casual remarks, in not 
too sympathetic or indignant a vein. Then, 
with heart and mind in anything but a hospi¬ 
table or joyous state, she set about the task 
of putting the sitting room in order. She 



go 


The Treasure 


X 


abandoned once and for all any hope of get¬ 
ting to her club or her tea that afternoon, and 
was therefore possessed of three distinct 
causes of grievance. 

With her mother heart aching for the quiet 
misery betrayed by Sandy's voice, she could 
not blame the girl. Nor could she blame her¬ 
self. So Justine got the full measure of her 
disapproval, and, while she worked, Mrs. 
Salisbury refreshed her soul with imaginary 
conversations in which she kindly but firmly 
informed Justine that her services were no 
longer needed- 

However, the dinner was perfect. Course 
smoothly followed course; there was no hesi¬ 
tating, no hitch; the service was swift, noise¬ 
less, unobtrusive. The head of the house was 
obviously delighted, and the guests enthusias¬ 
tic. 

Best of all, Owen arrived early, irreproach¬ 
ably dressed, if a little uncomfortable in his 
evening clothes, and confided to Sandy that he 
had had a “rotten time” with Miss Satterlee. 

“But she’s just the sort of little cat that 







The Treasure 


Qi 


catches a dear, great big idiot like Owen,” said 
Sandy to her mother, when the older woman 
had come in to watch the younger slip into 
her gown for the evening’s affair. 

“Look out, dear, or I will begin to suspect 
you of a tendrcsse in that direction!” the 
mother said archly. 

“For Owen?” Sandy raised surprised 
brows. “I’m mad about him, I’d marry him 
to-night!” she went on calmly. 

“If you really cared, dear, you couldn’t use 
that tone,” her mother said uncomfortably. 
“Love comes only once, real love, that is-” 

“Oh, Mother! There’s no such thing as real 
love,” Sandy said impatiently. “I know ten 
good, nice men I would marry, and I’ll bet you 
did, too, years ago, only you weren’t brought 
up to admit it! But I like Owen best, and it 
makes me sick to see a person like Rose Satter- 
lee annexing him. She’ll make him utterly 
wretched; she’s that sort. Whereas I am 
really decent, don’t you know; I’d be the sort 
of wife he’d go crazier and crazier about. 
He’s one of those unfortunate men who really 



9 2 


The Treasure 


don’t know what they want until they get 
something they don’t want. They-” 

“Don’t, dear. It distresses me to hear you 
talk this way,” Mrs. Salisbury said, with dig¬ 
nity. “I don’t know whether modern girls 
realize how dreadful they are,” she went on, 
“but at least I needn’t have my own daughter 
show such a lack of—of delicacy and of refine¬ 
ment.” And in the dead silence that followed 
she cast about for some effective way of 
changing the subject, and finally decided to tell 
Sandy what she thought of Justine. 

But here, too, Sandy was unsympathetic. 
Scowling as she hooked the filmy pink and sil¬ 
ver of her evening gown, Sandy took up 
Justine’s defense. 

“All up to me, Mother, every bit of it! And, 
honestly now, you had no right to ask her to 
do-” 

“No right!” Exasperated beyond all words, 
Mrs. Salisbury picked up her fan, gathered her 
dragging skirts together, and made a digni¬ 
fied departure from the room. “No right!” 
she echoed, more in pity than anger. “Well, 




The Treasure 


93 


really, I wonder sometimes what we are com¬ 
ing to! No right to ask my servant, whom I 
pay thirty-seven and a half dollars a month, 
to stop writing letters long enough to clean 
my sitting room! Well, right or wrong, we’ll 
see!” 

But the cryptic threat contained in the last 
words was never carried out. The dinner was 
perfect, and Owen was back in his old position 
as something between a brother and a lover, 
full of admiring great laughs for Sandy and 
boyish confidences. There was not a cloud on 
the evening for Mrs. Salisbury. And the 
question of Justine’s conduct was laid on the 
shelf. 















I 




CHAPTER IV 










CHAPTER IV 


FTER the dinner party domestic 
matters seemed to run even more 
smoothly than before, but there 
was a difference, far below the 
Mrs. Salisbury’s attitude toward 
the new maid. The mistress found herself in¬ 
cessantly looking for flaws in Justine’s per¬ 
fectness; for things that Justine might easily 
have done, but would not do. 

In this Mrs. Salisbury was unconsciously 
aided and abetted by her sister, Mrs. Otis, a 
large, magnificent woman of forty-five, who 
had a masterful and assured manner, as be¬ 
came a very rich and influential widow. Mrs. 
Otis had domineered Mrs. Salisbury through¬ 
out their childhood; she had brought up a num¬ 
ber of sons and daughters in a highly success¬ 
ful manner, and finally she kept a houseful of 



surface, in 


97 







The Treasure 


98 

servants, whom she managed with a firm hand, 
and managed, it must be admitted, very well. 
She had seen the Treasure many times before, 
but it was while spending a day in November 
with her sister that she first expressed her dis¬ 
approval of Justine. 

“You spoil her, Sarah,” said Mrs. Otis. 
“She’s a splendid cook, of course, and a nice- 
mannered girl. But you spoil her.” 

“I? I have nothing to do with it,” Mrs. 
Salisbury asserted promptly. “She does ex¬ 
actly what the college permits; no more and 
no less.” 

“Nonsense!” Mrs. Otis said largely, genially. 
And she exchanged an amused look with 
Sandy. 

The three ladies were in the little library, 
after luncheon, enjoying a coal fire. The sis¬ 
ters, both with sewing, were in big armchairs. 
Sandy, idly turning the pages of a new maga¬ 
zine, sat at her mother’s feet. The first heavy 
rain of the season battered at the windows. 

“Now, that darning, Sally,” Mrs. Otis said, 
glancing at her sister’s sewing. “Why don’t 


The Treasure 


99 


you simply call the girl and ask her to do it? 
There’s no earthly reason why she shouldn’t 
be useful. She’s got absolutely nothing to do. 
The girl would probably be happier with some 
work in her hands. Don’t encourage her to 
think that she can whisk through her lunch 
dishes and then rush off somewhere. They 
have no conscience about it, my dear. You’re 
the mistress, and you are supposed to arrange 
things exactly to suit yourself, no matter if 
nobody else has ever done things your way 
from the beginning of time!” 

“That’s a lovely theory, Auntie,” said Alex¬ 
andra, “but this is an entirely different situa¬ 
tion.” 

For answer Mrs. Otis merely compressed 
her lips, and flung the pink yarn that she was 
knitting into a baby’s sacque steadily over her 
flashing needles. 

“Where’s Justine now?” she asked, after a 
moment. 

“In her room,” Mrs. Salisbury answered. 

“No; she’s gone for a walk, Mother,” 
Sandy said. “She loves to walk in the rain, 


IOC 


The Treasure 


and she wanted to change her library book, 
and send a telegram or something-” 

“Just like a guest in the house!” Mrs. Otis 
observed, with fine scorn. “Surely she asked 
you if she might go, Sally?” 

“No. Her—her work is done. She— 

comes and goes that way.” 

“Without saying a word? And who an¬ 
swers the door ?” Mrs. Otis was unaffectedly 
astonished now. 

“She does if she’s in the house, Mattie, just 
as she answers the telephone. But she’s only 
actually on duty one afternoon a week.” 

“You see, the theory is, Auntie,” Sandy sup¬ 
plied, “that persons on our income—I won’t 
say of our position, for Mother hates that—• 
but on our income, aren’t supposed to require 
formal door-answering very often.” 

Mrs. Otis, her knitting suspended, moved 
her round eyes from mother to daughter and 
back again. She did not say a word, but words 
were not needed. 

“I know it seems outrageous, in some ways, 
Mattie,” Mrs. Salisbury presently said, with 



The Treasure 


ioi 


a little nervous laugh. “But what is one to 
do?” 

“Do?” echoed her sister roundly. “Do? 
Well, I know I keep six house servants, and 
have always kept at least three, and I never 
heard the equal of this in all my days! Do ?— 
Fd show you what Fd do fast enough! Do 
you suppose Fd pay a maid thirty-seven dol¬ 
lars a month to go tramping off to the library 
in the rain, and to tell me what my social 
status was? Why, Evelyn keeps two, and 
pays one eighteen and one fifteen, and do you 
suppose she’d allow either such liberties? Not 
at all. The downstairs girl wears a nice little 
cap and apron—‘Madam, dinner is served,’ she 
says-” 

“Yes, but Evelyn’s had seven cooks since 
she was married,” Sandy, who was not a great 
admirer of her young married cousin, put in 
here, “and Arthur said that she actually cried 
because she could not give a decent dinner!” 

“Evelyn’s only a beginner, dear,” said Eve¬ 
lyn’s mother sharply, “but she has the right 
spirit. No nonsense, regular holidays, and 



102 


The Treasure 


hard work when they are working is the only 
way to impress maids. Mary Underwood,” 
she went on, turning to her sister, “says that, 
when she and Fred are to be away for a meal, 
she deliberately lays out extra work for the 
maid; she says it keeps her from getting ideas. 
No, Sally,” Mrs. Otis concluded, with the 
older-sister manner she had worn years ago, 
“no, dear; you are all wrong about this, and 
sooner or later this girl will simply walk over 
you, and you'll see it as I do. Changing her 
book at the library, indeed! How did she 
know that you mightn’t want tea served this 
afternoon?” 

“She wouldn't serve it, if we did, Aunt Mar- 

p 

tha,” Sandy said, dimpling. “She never 

\ 

serves tea! That’s one of the regulations.” 

“Well, we simply won’t discuss it,” Mrs. 
Otis said, firm lines forming themselves at the 
corners of her capable mouth. “If you like 
that sort of thing, you like it, that's all! I 
don’t. We’ll talk of something else.” 

But she could not talk of anything else. 
Presently she burst out afresh. 


The Treasure 


103 


“Dear me, when I think of the way Ma used 
to manage ’em! No nonsense there; it was 
walk a chalk line in Ma’s house! Your grand¬ 
mother,” she said to Alexandra, with stern 
relish, “had had a pack of slaves about her 
in her young days. But, of course, Sally,” 
she added charitably, “you’ve been ill, and 
things do have to run themselves when one’s 
ill- 

“You don’t get the idea, Auntie,” Sandy 
said blithely. “Mother pays for efficiency. 
Justine isn’t a mere extra pair of hands; she’s 
a trained professional worker. She’s just like 
a stenographer, except that what she does is 
ten times harder to learn than stenography. 
We can no more ask her to get tea than Dad 
could ask his head bookkeeper to—well, to 
drop in here some Sunday and O.K. Mother’s 
household accounts. It’s an age of specializa¬ 
tion, Aunt Martha.” 

“It’s an age of utter nonsense,” Mrs. Otis 
said forcibly. “But if your mother and father 
like to waste their money that way-” 

“There isn’t much waste of money to it,” 




104 


The Treasure 


Mrs. Salisbury put in neatly, “for Justine man¬ 
ages on less than I ever did. I think there’s 
been only one week this fall when she hasn’t 
had a balance.” 

“A balance of what?” 

“A surplus, I mean. A margin left from 
her allowance.” 

The pink wool fell heavily into Mrs. Otis’s 
broad lap. 

“She handles your money for you, does 
she, Sally?” 

“Why, yes. She seems eminently fitted for 
it. And she does it for a third less, Mattie, 
truly. She more than saves the difference in 
her wages.” 

“You let her buy things and pay tradesmen, 
do you ?” 

“Oh, Auntie, why not?” Alexandra asked, 
amused but impatient. “Why shouldn’t 
Mother let her do that?” 

“Well, it’s not my idea of good housekeep¬ 
ing, that’s all,” Mrs. Otis said staidly. “Man¬ 
aging is the most important part of house¬ 
keeping. In giving such a girl financial re- 


The Treasure 


io 5 

sponsibilities, you not only let go of the con¬ 
trol of your household, but you put tempta¬ 
tion in her way. No; let the girl try making 
some beds, and serving tea, now and then; and 
do your own marketing and paying, Sally. 
It’s the only way.” 

“Justine tempted—why, she’s not that sort 
of girl at all!” Alexandra laughed gaily. 

“Very well, my dear, perhaps she’s not, and 
perhaps you young girls know everything that 
is to be known about life,” her aunt answered 
ivitheringly. “But when grown business men 
were cheated as easily as those men in the 
First National were,” she finished impres¬ 
sively, alluding to recent occurrences in River 
Falls, “it seems a little astonishing to find a 
girl your age so sure of her own judgment, 
that’s all.” 

Sandy’s answer, if indirect, was effective. 

“How about some tea?” she asked. “Will 
you have some, either of you? It only takes 
me a minute to get it.” 

“And I wish you could have seen Mattie’s 
expression, Kane,” Mrs. Salisbury said to her 


io6 


The Treasure 


husband when telling him of the conversation 
that evening, “really, she glared! I suppose 
she really can’t understand how, with an ex¬ 
pensive servant in the house-” Mrs. Salis¬ 

bury’s voice dropped a little on a note of mild 
amusement. She sat idly at her dressing table, 
her hair loosened, her eyes thoughtful. When 
she spoke again, it was with a shade of re¬ 
sentment. “And, really, it is most incon¬ 
venient,” she said. “I don’t want to impose 
upon a girl; I never did impose upon a girl; 
but I like to feel that I’m mistress in my own 
house. If the work is too hard one day, I 
will make it easier the next, and so on. But, 
as Mat says, it looks so disobliging in a maid 
to have her race off; she doesn’t care whether 
you get any tea or not; she’s enjoying her¬ 
self! And after all one’s kindness- And 

then another thing,” she presently roused her¬ 
self to add, “Mat thinks that it is very bad 
management on my part to let Justine handle 

money. She says-” 

“I devoutly wish that Mattie Otis would 
mind-” Mr. Salisbury did not finish his 






The Treasure 


107 


sentence. He wound his watch, laid it on his 
bureau, and went on, more mildly: “If you 
can do better than Justine, it may or may not 
be worth your while to take that out of her 
hands; but, if you can’t, it seems to me sheer 
folly. My Lord, Sally-” 

“Yes, I know! I know,” Mrs. Salisbury 
said hastily. “But, really, Kane,” she went 
on slowly, the color coming into her face, “let 
us suppose that every family had a graduate 
cook, who marketed and managed. And let 
us suppose the children, like ours, out of the 
nursery. Then just what share of her own 
household responsibility is a woman supposed 
to take? 

“You are eternally saying, not about me, 
but about other men’s wives, that women to¬ 
day have too much leisure as it is. But, with 
a Justine, why, I could go off to clubs and card 
parties every day! I’d know that the house 
was clean, the meals as good and as nourishing 
as could be; I’d know that guests would be 
well cared for and that bills would be paid. 
Isn’t a woman, the mistress of a house, sup- 



io8 


The Treasure 


posed to do more than that? I don’t want 
to be a mere figurehead.” 

Frowning at her own reflection in the glass, 
deeply in earnest, she tried to puzzle it out. 

“In the old times, when women had big es¬ 
tates to look after,” she presently pursued, 
“servants, horses, cows, vegetables and fruit 
gardens, soap-making and weaving and chick¬ 
ens and babies, they had real responsibilities, 
they had real interests. Housekeeping to-day 
isn't interesting. It’s confining, and it’s 
monotonous. But take it away, and what is 
a woman going to do?” 

“That,” her husband answered seriously, “is 
the real problem of the day, I truly believe. 
That is what you women have to discover. 
Delegating your housekeeping, how are you 
going to use your energies, and find the work 
you want to do in the world? How are you 
going to manage the questions of being 
obliged to work at home, and to suit your 
hours to yourself, and to really express your¬ 
selves, and at the same time get done some of 


The Treasure 


109 

the work of the world that is waiting for 
women to do.” 

His wife continued to eye him expectantly. 

“Well, how?” said she. 

“I don’t know. I’m asking you!” he an¬ 
swered pointedly. Mrs. Salisbury sighed. 

“Dear me, I do get so tired of this talk of 
efficiency, and women’s work in the world!” 
she said. “I wish one might feel it was enough 
to live along quietly, busy with dressmaking, 
or perhaps now and then making a fancy des¬ 
sert for guests, giving little teas and card par¬ 
ties, and making calls. It-” a yearning 

admiration rang in her voice, “it seems such a 
dignified, pleasant ideal to live up to!” she 
said. 

“Well, it looks as if we had seen the last of 
that particular type of woman,” her husband 
said cheerfully. “Or at least it looks as if 
that woman would find her own level, delib¬ 
erately separate herself from her more ambi¬ 
tious sisters, who want to develop higher arts 
than that of mere housekeeping.” 



no 


The Treasure 


“And how do you happen to know so much 
about it, Kane ?” 

“I? Oh, it’s in the air, I guess,” the man 
admitted. “The whole idea is changing. A 
man used to be ashamed of the idea of his 
wife working. Now men tell you with pride 
that their wives paint or write or bind books— 
Bates’ wife makes loads of money designing 
toys, and Mrs. Brewster is consulting physi¬ 
cian on a hospital staff. Mary Shotwell—she 
was a trained nurse—what was it she did?” 

“She gave a series of talks on hygiene for 
rich people’s children,” his wife supplied. 
“And of course Florence Yeats makes candy, 
and the Gerrish girls have opened a tea room 
in the old garage. But it seems funny, just 
the same! It seems funny to me that so many 
women find it worth while to hire servants, 
so that they can rush off to make the money 
to pay the servants! It would seem so much 
more normal to stay at home and do the house¬ 
work themselves, and it would look better.” 

“Well, certain women always will, I sup¬ 
pose. And others will find their outlets in 


The Treasure 


hi 


other ways, and begin to look about for 
Justines, who will lift the household load. I 
believe we’ll see the time, Sally,” said Kane 
Salisbury thoughtfully, “when a young couple, 
launching into matrimony, will discuss ex¬ 
penses with a mutual interest; you pay this 
and I’ll pay that, as it were. A trained woman 
will step into their kitchen, and Madame will 
walk off to business with her husband, as a 
matter of course.” 

“Heaven forbid!” Mrs. Salisbury said 
piously. “If there is anything romantic or 
tender or beautiful about married life under 
those circumstances, I fail to see it, that’s all!” 

It happened, a week or two later, on a 
sharp, sunshiny morning in early winter, that 
Mrs. Salisbury and Alexandra found them¬ 
selves sauntering through the nicest shopping 
district of River Falls. There were various 
small things to be bought for the wardrobes 
of mother and daughter, prizes for a card 
party, birthday presents for one of the boys, 
and a number of other little things. 

They happened to pass the windows of 


112 


The Treasure 


Lewis & Sons’ big grocery, one of the finest 
shops in town, on their way from one store 
to another, and, attracted by a window full 
of English preserves, Mrs. Salisbury decided 
to go in and leave an order. 

“I hope that you are going to bring your 
account back to us, Mrs. Salisbury,” said the 
alert salesman who waited upon them. “We 
are always sorry to let an old customer go.” 

“But I have an account here,” said Mrs. 
Salisbury, startled. 

The salesman, smiling, shook his head, and 
one of the members of the firm, coming up, 
confirmed the denial. 

“We were very sorry to take your name 
off our books, Mrs. Salisbury,” said he, with 
pleasant dignity; “I can remember your com¬ 
ing into the old store on River Street when 
this young lady here was only a small girl.” 

His hand indicated a spot about three feet 
from the floor, as the height of the child Alex¬ 
andra, and the grown Alexandra dimpled an 
appreciation of his memory. 

“But I don’t understand,” Mrs. Salisbury 


The Treasure 


1 13 

said, wrinkling her forehead; “I had no idea 
that the account was closed, Mr. Lewis. How 
long ago was this 

“It was while you were ill,” said Mr. Lewis 
soothingly. “You might look up the exact 
date, Mr. Laird.” 

“But why?” Mrs. Salisbury asked, prettily 
puzzled. 

“That I don’t know,” answered Mr. Lewis. 
“And at the time, of course, we did not press 
it. There was no complaint, of that I’m very 
sure.” 

“But I don’t understand,” Mrs. Salisbury 
persisted. “I don’t see who could have done 
it except Mr. Salisbury, and, if he had had 
any reason, he would have told me of it. 
However,” she rose to go, “if you’ll send the 
jams, and the curry, and the chocolate, Mr. 
Laird, I’ll look into the matter at once.” 

“And you’re quite yourself again?” Mr. 
Lewis asked solicitously, accompanying them 
to the door. “That’s the main thing, isn’t it? 
There’s been so much sickness everywhere 
lately. And your young lady looks as if she 


The Treasure 


114 

didn’t know the meaning of the word. Won¬ 
derful morning, isn’t it? Good morning, Mrs. 
Salisbury!” 

“Good morning!” Mrs. Salisbury responded 
graciously. But, as soon as she and Alexan¬ 
dra were out of hearing, her face darkened. 
“That makes me wild!” said she. 

“What does, darling?” 

“That! Justine having the audacity to 
change my trade!” 

“But why should she want to, Mother?” 

“I really don’t know. Given it to friends of 
hers perhaps.” 

“Oh, Mother, she wouldn’t!” 

“Well, we’ll see.” Mrs. Salisbury dropped 
the subject, and brought her mind back with 
a visible effort to the morning’s work. 

Immediately after lunch she interrogated 
Justine. The girl was drying glasses, each 
one emerging like a bubble of hot and shining 
crystal from her checked glass towel. 

“Justine,” began the mistress, “have we 
been getting our groceries from Lewis & Sons 
lately?” 


The Treasure 


Ir 5 

Justine placidly referred to an account book 
which she took from a drawer under the pan¬ 
try shelves. 

“Our last order was August eleventh,” she 
announced. 

Something in her unembarrassed serenity 
annoyed Mrs. Salisbury. 

“May I ask why?” she suggested sharply. 

“Well, they are a long way from here,” 
Justine said, after a second’s thought, “and 
they are very expensive grocers, Mrs. Salis¬ 
bury. Of course, what they have is of the 
best, but they cater to the very richest fam¬ 
ilies, you know—firms like Lewis & Sons 
aren’t very much interested in the orders they 
receive from—well, from upper middle-class 
homes, people of moderate means. They han¬ 
dle hotels and the summer colony at Burning 
Woods.” 

Justine paused, a little uncertain of her 
terms, and Mrs. Salisbury interposed an icy 
question. 

“May I ask where you have transferred my 
trade?” 


The Treasure 


116 

“Not to any one place/’ the girl answered 
readily and mildly. But a little resentful 
color had crept into her cheeks. “I pay as I 
go, and follow the bargains,” she explained. 
“I go to market twice a week, and send 
enough home to make it worth while for the 
tradesman. You couldn’t market as I do, Mrs. 
Salisbury, but the tradespeople rather expect 
it of a maid. Sometimes I gather an assort¬ 
ment of vegetables into my basket, and get 
them to make a price on the whole. Or, if 
there is a sale at any store, I go there, and 
order a dozen cans, or twenty pounds of what¬ 
ever they are selling.” 

Mrs. Salisbury was not enjoying this reve¬ 
lation. The obnoxious term “upper middle 
class” was biting like an acid upon her pride. 
And it was further humiliating to contemplate 
her maid as a driver of bargains, as dicker¬ 
ing for baskets of vegetables. 

“The best is always the cheapest in the long 
run, whatever it may cost, Justine,” she said, 
with dignity. “We may not be among the 
richest families in town,” she was unable to 


The Treasure 


117 

refrain from adding, “but it is rather amusing 
to hear you speak of the family as upper mid¬ 
dle class!” 

“I only meant the—the sort of ordering we 
did/' Justine hastily interposed. “I meant 
from the grocer’s point of view.” 

“Well, Mr. Lewis sold groceries to my 
grandmother before I was married,” Mrs. 
Salisbury said loftily, “and I prefer him to 
any other grocer. If he is too far away, the 
order may be telephoned. Or give me your 
list, and I will stop in, as I used to do. Then 
I can order any little extra delicacy that I see, 
something I might not otherwise think of. 
Let me know what you need to-morrow morn¬ 
ing, and I’ll see to it.” 

To her surprise, Justine did not bow an 
instant assent. Instead the girl looked a little 
troubled. 

“Shall I give you my accounts and my 
ledger?” she asked rather uncertainly. 

“No-o, I don’t see any necessity for that,” 
the older woman said, after a second’s pause. 

“But Lewis & Sons is a very expensive 


n8 


The Treasure 


place/’ Justine pursued; “they never have 
sales, never special prices. Their cheapest to¬ 
matoes are fifteen cents a can, and their 
peaches twenty-five-” 

“Never mind,” Mrs. Salisbury interrupted 
her briskly. “We’ll manage somehow. I al¬ 
ways did trade there, and never had any trou¬ 
ble. Begin with him to-morrow. And, while, 
of course, I understand that I was ill and 
couldn’t be bothered in this case, I want to ask 
you not to make any more changes without 
consulting me, if you please.” 

Justine, still standing, her troubled eyes on 
her employer, the last glass, polished to dia¬ 
mond brightness, in her hand, frowned mu¬ 
tinously. 

“You understand that if you do any order¬ 
ing whatever, Mrs. Salisbury, I will have to 
give up my budget. You see, in that case, I 
wouldn’t know where I stood at all.” 

“You would get the bill at the end of the 
month,” Mrs. Salisbury said, displeased. 

“Yes, but I don’t run bills,” the girl per¬ 
sisted. 



The Treasure 


119 

“I don't care to discuss it, Justine,” the 
mistress said pleasantly; “just do as I ask you, 
if you please, and we’ll settle everything at 
the end of the month. You shall not be held 
responsible, I assure you.” 

She went out of the kitchen, and the next 
morning had a pleasant half hour in the big 
grocery, and left a large order. 

“Just a little kitchen misunderstanding,” 
she told the affable Mr. Lewis, “but when one 

is ill- However, I am rapidly getting the 

reins back into my own hands now.” 

After that, Mrs. Salisbury ordered in per¬ 
son, or by telephone, every day, and Justine's 
responsibilities were confined to the meat mar¬ 
ket and greengrocer. Everything went along 
very smoothly until the end of the month, 
when Justine submitted her usual weekly ac¬ 
count and a bill from Lewis & Sons which 
was some three times larger in amount than 
was the margin of money supposed to pay it. 

This was annoying. Mrs. Salisbury could 
not very well rebuke her, nor could she pay 
the bill out of her own purse. She deter- 



120 


The Treasure 


mined to put it aside until her husband 
seemed in a mood for financial advances, and, 
wrapping it firmly about the inadequate notes 
and silver given her by Justine, she shut it in 
a desk drawer. There the bill remained, al¬ 
though the money was taken out for one thing 
or another; change that must be made, a small 
bill that must be paid at the door. 

Another fortnight went by, and Lewis & 
Sons submitted another bimonthly bill. Jus¬ 
tine also gave her mistress another inadequate 
sum, what was left from her week’s expendi¬ 
tures. 

The two grocery bills were for rather a for¬ 
midable sum. The thought of them, in their 
desk drawer, rather worried Mrs. Salisbury. 
One evening she bravely told her husband 
about them, and laid them before him. 

Mr. Salisbury was annoyed. He had been 
free from these petty worries for some 
months, and he disliked their introduction 
again. 

“I thought this was Justine’s business, 
Sally?” said he, frowning over his eyeglasses. 


The Treasure 


121 


“Well, it is” said his wife, “but she hasn’t 
enough money, apparently, and she simply 
handed me these, without saying anything.” 

“Well, but that doesn’t sound like her. 
Why?” 

“Oh, because I do the ordering, she says. 
They’re queer, you know, Kane; all servants 
are. And she seems very touchy about it.” 

“Nonsense!” said the head of the house 
roundly. “Oh, Justine!” he shouted, and the 
maid, after putting an inquiring head in from 
the dining-room, duly came in, and stood be¬ 
fore him. 

“What’s struck your budget that you were 
so proud of, Justine?” asked Kane Salisbury. 
“It looks pretty sick.” 

“I am not keeping on a budget now,” an¬ 
swered Justine, with a rather surprised glance 
at her mistress. 

“Not; but why not?” asked the man good- 
naturedly. And his wife added briskly, “Why 
did you stop, Justine?” 

“Because Mrs. Salisbury has been ordering 
all this month,” Justine said. “And that, of 


122 


The Treasure 


course, makes it impossible for me to keep 
track of what is spent. These last four weeks 
I have only been keeping an account; I haven’t 
attempted to keep within any limit.” 

“Ah, you see that’s it,” Kane Salisbury said 
triumphantly. “Of course that’s it! Well, 
Mrs. Salisbury will have to let you go back 
to the ordering then. D’ye see, Sally? Natu¬ 
rally, Justine can’t do a thing while you’re 

buying at random-” 

“My dear, we have dealt with Lewis & Sons 
ever since we were married,” Mrs. Salisbury 
said, smiling with great tolerance, and in a 
soothing voice, “Justine, for some reason, 

doesn’t like Lewis & Sons-” 

“It isn’t that,” said the maid quickly. “It’s 
just that it’s against the rules of the college 
for anyone else to do any ordering, unless, of 
course, you and I discussed it beforehand and 
decided just what to spend.” 

“You mean, unless I simply went to market 
for you ?” asked the mistress, in a level tone. 
“Well, it amounts to that—yes.” 




The Treasure 


123 


Mrs. Salisbury threw her husband one 
glance. 

“Well, I’ll tell you what we have decided 
in the morning, Justine,” she said, with dig¬ 
nity. “That’s all. You needn’t wait.” 

Justine went back to her kitchen, and Mr. 
Salisbury, smiling, said: 

“Sally, how unreasonable you are! And 
how you do dislike that girl!” 

The outrageous injustice of this scattered 
to the winds Mrs. Salisbury’s last vestige of 
calm, and, after one scathing summary of the 
case, she refused to discuss it at all, and 
opened the evening paper with marked de¬ 
liberation. 

For the next two or three weeks she did 
all the marketing herself, but this plan did 
not work well. Bills doubled in size, and so 
many things were forgotten, or were ordered 
at the last instant by telephone, and arrived 
too late, that the whole domestic system was 
demoralized. 

Presently, of her own accord, Mrs. Salis¬ 
bury reestablished Justine with her allowance, 


124 


The Treasure 


and with full authority to shop when and how 
she pleased, and peace fell again. But, smol¬ 
dering in Mrs. Salisbury’s bosom was a deep 
resentment at this peculiar and annoying state 
of affairs. She began to resent everything 
Justine did and said, as one human being shut 
up in the same house with another is very 
apt to do. 

No schooling ever made it easy to accept 
the sight of Justine’s leisure when she herself 
was busy. It was always exasperating, when 
perhaps making beds upstairs, to glance from 
the window and see Justine starting for mar¬ 
ket, her handsome figure well displayed in her 
long dark coat, her shining braids half hid¬ 
den by her simple yet dashing hat. 

“I walked home past Perry’s,” Justine 
would perhaps say on her return, “to see their 
prize chrysanthemums. They really are won¬ 
derful ! The old man took me over the green¬ 
houses himself, and showed me everything!” 

Or perhaps, unpacking her market basket 
by the spotless kitchen table, she would con¬ 
fide innocently: 


The Treasure 


125 

“Samuels is really having an extraordinary 
sale of serges this morning. I went in, and 
got two dress lengths for my sister’s children. 
If I can find a good dressmaker, I really be¬ 
lieve I’ll have one myself. I think”—Justine 
would eye her vegetables thoughtfully—“I 
think I’ll go up now and have my bath, and 
cook these later.” 

Mrs. Salisbury could reasonably find no 
fault with this. But an indescribable irrita¬ 
tion possessed her whenever such a conversa¬ 
tion took place. The coolness!—she would 
say to herself, as she went upstairs—wander¬ 
ing about to shops and greenhouses, and 
quietly deciding to take a bath before lunch¬ 
eon! Why, Mrs. Salisbury had had maids 
who never once asked for the use of the bath¬ 
room, although they had been for months in 
her employ. 

No, she could not attack Justine on this 
score. But she began to entertain the girl 
with enthusiastic accounts of the domestics of 
earlier and better days. 

“My mother had a girl,” she said, “a girl 


126 


The Treasure 


named Norah O’Connor. I remember her 
very well. She swept, she cleaned, she did 
the entire washing for a family of eight, and 
she did all the cooking. And such cookies, 
and pies, and gingerbread as she made! All 
for sixteen dollars a month. We regarded 
Norah as a member of the family, and, even 
on her holidays she would take three or four 
of us, and walk with us to my father’s grave; 
that was all she wanted to do. You don’t see 
her like in these days, dear old Norah!” 

Justine listened respectfully, silently. Once, 
when her mistress was enlarging upon the ad¬ 
vantages of slavery, the girl commented 
mildly: 

“Doesn’t it seem a pity that the women of 
the United States didn’t attempt at least to 
train all those Southern colored people for 
house servants? It seems to be their natural 
element. They love to live in white families, 
and they have no caste pride. It would seem 
to be such a waste of good material, letting 
them worry along without much guidance all 


The Treasure 


127 


these years. It almost seems as if the Union 
owed it to them.” 

“Dear me, I wish somebody would! I, for 
one, would love to have dear old mammies 
around me again,” Mrs. Salisbury said, with 
fervor. “They know their place,” she added 
neatly. 

“The men could be butlers and gardeners 
and coachmen,” pursued Justine. 

“Yes, and with a lot of finely trained col¬ 
ored women in the market, where would you 
girls from the college be?” the other woman 
asked, not without a spice of mischievous en¬ 
joyment. 

“We would be a finer type of servant, for 
more fastidious people,” Justine scored by an¬ 
swering soberly. “You could hardly expect 
a colored girl to take the responsibility of 
much actual managing, I should suppose. 
There would always be a certain proportion 
of people who would prefer white servants.” 

“Perhaps there are,” Mrs. Salisbury admit¬ 
ted dubiously. She felt, with a sense of tri¬ 
umph, that she had given Justine a pretty 


128 


The Treasure 


fi 


strong hint against “uppishness.” But Jus¬ 
tine was innocently impervious to hints. As 
a matter of fact, she was not an exceptionally 
bright girl; literal, simple, and from very plain 
stock, she was merely well trained in her 
chosen profession. Sometimes she told her 
mistress of her fellow-graduates, taking it for 
granted that Mrs. Salisbury entirely approved 
of all the ways of the American School of 
Domestic Science. 

“There’s Mabel Frost,” said Justine one 
day. “She would have graduated when I did, 
but she took the fourth year’s work. She 
really is of a very fine family; her father is 
a doctor. And she has a position with a doc¬ 
tor’s family now, right near here, in New 
Troy. There are just two in family, and 
both are doctors, and away all day. So Ma¬ 
bel has a splendid chance to keep up her mu- 
sic. 

“Music?” Mrs. Salisbury asked sharply. 

“Piano. She’s had lessons all her life. She 
plays very well, too.” 

“Yes; and some day the doctor or his wife 


The Treasure 


129 


will come in and find her at the piano, and 
your friend will lose her fine position,” Mrs. 
Salisbury suggested. 

“Oh, Mabel never would have touched the 
piano without their permission,” Justine said 
quickly, with a little resentful flush. 

“You mean that they are perfectly willing 
to have her use it?” Mrs. Salisbury asked. 

“Oh, quite!” 

“Have they adopted her?” 

“Oh, no! No; Mabel is twenty-four or 
five.” 

“What’s the doctor’s name?” 

“Mitchell. Dr. Quentin Mitchell. He’s a 
member of the Burning Woods Club.” 

“A member of the club! And he al¬ 
lows-” Mrs. Salisbury did not finish her 

thought. “I don’t want to say anything 
against your friend,” she began again pres¬ 
ently, “but for a girl in her position to waste 
her time studying music seems rather absurd 
to me. I thought the very idea of the col¬ 
lege was to content girls with household posi¬ 
tions.” 



130 


The Treasure 


^VVell, she is going to be married next 
spring,” Justine said, ‘‘and her husband is 
quite musical. He plays a church organ. I 
am going to dinner with them on Thursday, 
and then to the Gadski concert. They’re both 
quite music mad.” 

“Well, I hope he can afford to buy tickets 
for Gadski, but marriage is a pretty expensive 
business,” Mrs. Salisbury said pleasantly, 
“What is he, a chauffeur—a salesman?” 
To do her justice, she knew the question 
would not offend, for Justine, like any girl 
from a small town, was not fastidious as to 
the position of her friends; was very fond of 
the policeman on the corner and his pretty 
wife, and liked a chat with Mrs. Sargent’s 
chauffeur when occasion arose. 

But the girl’s answer, in this case, was a 
masterly thrust. 

“No; he’s something in a bank, Mrs. Salis¬ 
bury. He's paying teller in that little bank at 
Burton Corners, beyond Burning Woods. 
But, of course, he hopes for promotion; they 
all do. I believe he is trying to get into the 


The Treasure 


River Falls Mutual Savings, but I’m not 
sure.” 

Airs. Salisbury felt the blood in her face. 
Kane Salisbury had been in a bank when she 
married him; was cashier of the River Falls 
Mutual Savings Bank now. 

She carried away the asters she had been 
arranging, without further remark. But Jus¬ 
tine’s attitude rankled. Mrs. Salisbury, ab¬ 
surd as she felt her own position to be, could 
not ignore the impertinence of her maid’s 
point of view. Theoretically, what Justine 
thought mattered less than nothing. Actually 
it really made a great difference to the mis¬ 
tress of the house. 

“I would like to put that girl in her place 
once!” thought Mrs. Salisbury. She began to 

wish that Justine would marry, and to envy 

♦ 

those of her friends who were still struggling 
with untrained Maggies and Almas and 
Chloes. Whatever their faults, these girls 
were still servants, old-fashioned “help”— 
they drudged away at cooking and beds and 


1 3 2 


The Treasure 


sweeping all day, and rattled dishes far into 
the night. 

The possibility of getting a second little 
maid occurred to her. She suggested it, tenta¬ 
tively, to Sandy. 

“You couldn’t, unless I’m mistaken, 
Mother,” Sandy said briskly, eyeing a sand¬ 
wich before she bit into it. The ladies were 
at luncheon. “For a graduate servant can’t 
work with any but a graduate servant; that’s 
the rule. At least I think it is!” And Sandy, 
turning toward the pantry, called: “Oh, Jus¬ 
tine!” 

“Justine,” she asked, when the maid ap¬ 
peared, “isn’t it true that you graduates can’t 
work with untrained girls in the house?” 

“That’s the rule,” Justine assented. 

“And what does the school expect you to 
pay a second girl?” pursued the daughter of 
the house. 

“Well, where there are no children, twenty 
dollars a month,” said Justine, “with one dol¬ 
lar each for every person more than two in 
the family. Then, in that case, the head serv- 


The Treasure 


*33 


ant, as we call the cook, would get five dollars 
less a month. That is, I would get thirty-two 
dollars, and the assistant twenty-three.” 

“Gracious!” said Mrs. Salisbury. “Thank 
you, Justine. We were just asking. Fifty- 
five dollars for the two!” she ejaculated un¬ 
der her breath when the girl was gone. 
“Why, I could get a fine cook and waitress 
for less than that!” 

And instantly the idea of two good maids 
instead of one graduated one possessed her. 
A fine cook in the kitchen, paid, say twenty- 
five, and a “second girl,” paid sixteen. And 
none of these ridiculous and inflexible regula¬ 
tions! Ah, the satisfaction of healthily im¬ 
posing upon a maid again, of rewarding that 
maid with the gift of a half-worn gown, as a 
peace offering—Mrs. Salisbury drew a long 
breath. The time had come for a change. 

Mr. Salisbury, however, routed the idea 
with scorn. His wife had no argument hardy 
enough to survive the blighting breath of his 
astonishment. And Alexandra, casually ap¬ 
proached, proved likewise unfavorable. 


134 


The Treasure 


“I am certainly not furthering my own com¬ 
fort alone in this, as you and Daddy seem in¬ 
clined to think,” Mrs. Salisbury said severely 
to her daughter. “I feel that Justine’s sys¬ 
tem is an imposition upon you, dear. It isn’t 
right for a pretty girl of your age to be 
caught dusting the sitting-room, as Owen 
caught you yesterday. Daddy and I can keep 
a nice home, we keep a motor car, we put the 
boys in good schools, and it doesn’t seem 
fair-” 

“Oh, fair your grandmother!” Sandy broke 
in, with a breezy laugh. “If Owen Sargent 
doesn’t like it, he can just come to! Look at 
his mother, eating dinner the other day with 
four representatives of the Waitresses’ Union! 
Marching in a parade with dear knows who! 
Besides-” ? 

“It is very different in Mrs. Sargent’s case, 
dear,” said Mrs. Salisbury simply. “She 
could afford to do anything, and consequently 
it doesn’t matter what she does! It doesn’t 
matter what you do, if you can afford not to. 




The Treasure 


i 35 


The point is that we can’t really afford a sec¬ 
ond maid.” 

“I don’t see what that has to do with it!” 
said the girl of the coming generation cheer¬ 
fully. 

“It has everything to do with it,” the 
woman of the passing generation answered 
seriously. 

“As far as Owen goes,” Sandy went on 
thoughtfully, “I’m only too much afraid he’s 
the other way. What do you suppose he’s 
going to do now? He’s going to establish 
a little Neighborhood House for boys down 
on River Street, 'The Cyrus Sargent Me¬ 
morial/ And, if you please, he’s going to 
live there! It’s a ducky house; he showed 
me the blue-prints, with the darlingest apart¬ 
ment for himself you ever saw, and a plunge, 
and a roof gymnasium. It’s going to cost, en¬ 
dowment and all, three hundred thousand 
dollars-” 

“Good heavens!” Mrs. Salisbury said, as 
one stricken. 

“And the worst of it is,” Alexandra pur- 



136 


The Treasure 


sued, with a sympathetic laugh for her 
mother’s concern, “that he’ll meet some Ma¬ 
donna-eyed little factory girl or laundry 
worker down there and feel that he owes it 
to her to-” 

“To break your heart, Sandy,” the mother 
supplied, all tender solicitude. 

“It’s not so much a question of my heart,” 
Sandy answered composedly, “as it is a ques¬ 
tion of his entire life. It’s so unnecessary and 
senseless!” 

“And you can sit there calmly discussing 
it!” Mrs. Salisbury said, thoroughly out of 
temper with the entire scheme of things mun¬ 
dane. “Upon my word, I never saw or heard 
anything like it!” she observed. “I wonder 
that you don’t quietly tell Owen that you care 
for him—but it’s too dreadful to joke about! 
I give you up!” 

And she rose from her chair, and went 
quickly out of the room, every line in her 
erect little figure expressing exasperation and 
inflexibility. Sandy, smiling sleepily, reopened 



The Treasure 


i 37 


an interrupted novel. But she stared over the 
open page into space for a few moments, and 
finally spoke: 

“Upon my word, I don’t know that that’s 
at all a bad idea!” 





CHAPTER V 


CHAPTER V 


gCIlL 



RS. SALISBURY,” said Justine, 


when her mistress came into the 
kitchen one December morning, 
“I’ve had a note from Mrs. Sar- 


“From Mrs. Sargent?” Mrs. Salisbury re¬ 
peated, astonished. And to herself she said: 
“She’s trying to get Justine away from me!” 

“She writes as Chairman of the Depart¬ 
ment of Civics of the Forum Club,” pursued 
Justine, referring to the letter she held in her 
hand, “to ask me if I will address the club 
some Thursday on the subject of the College 
of Domestic Science. I know that you ex¬ 
pect to give a card party some Thursday, and 
I thought I would make sure just which one 
you meant.” 

Mrs. Salisbury, taken entirely unaware, was 
actually speechless for a moment. The Forum 







142 


The Treasure 


was, of all her clubs, the one in which mem¬ 
bership was most prized by the women of 
River Falls. It was not a large club, and she 
had longed for many years somehow to place 
her name among the eighty on its roll. The 
richest and most exclusive women of River 
Falls belonged to the Forum Club; its few 
rooms, situated in the business part of town, 
and handsomely but plainly furnished, were 
full of subtle reminders that here was no 
mere social center; here responsible members 
of the recently enfranchised sex met to dis¬ 
cuss civic betterment, schools and municipal 
budgets, commercialized vice and child labor, 
library appropriations, liquor laws and sewer 
systems. Local politicians were beginning to 
respect the Forum, local newspapers reported 
its conventions, printed its communications. 

Mrs. Salisbury was really a little bit out of 
place among the clever, serious young doctors, 
the architects, lawyers, philanthropists and 
writers who belonged to the club. But her 
membership therein was one of the things in 
which she felt an unalloyed satisfaction. If 




The Treasure 


i43 


the discussions ever secretly bored or puzzled 
her, she was quite clever enough to conceal 
it. She sat, her handsome face, under its 
handsome hat, turned toward the speaker, her 
bright eyes immovable as she listened to re¬ 
ports and expositions. And, after the motion 
to adjourn had been duly made, she had her 
reward. Rich women, brilliant women, fa¬ 
mous women chatted with her cordially as the 
Forum Club streamed downstairs. She was 
asked to luncheons, to teas; she was whirled 
home in the limousines of her fellow-members. 
No other one thing in her life seemed to Mrs. 
Salisbury as definite a social triumph as was 
her membership in the Forum. 

Her election had come about simply enough, 
after years of secret longing to become a mem¬ 
ber. Sandy, who was about twelve at the time, 
during a call from Mrs. Sargent, had said in¬ 
nocently : 

“Why haven’t you ever joined the Forum, 
Mother?” 

“Why, yes; why not?” Mrs. Sargent had 
added. 


144 


The Treasure 


This gave Mrs. Salisbury an opportunity to 
say: 

“Well, I have been a very busy woman, and 
couldn’t have done so, with these three dear 
children to watch. But, as a matter of fact, 
Mrs. Sargent, I have never been asked. At 
least,” she went on scrupulously, “I am almost 
sure I never have been!” The implication be¬ 
ing that the Forum’s card of invitation might 
have been overlooked for more important af¬ 
fairs. 

“I’ll send you another,” the great lady had 
said at once. “You’re just the sort we need,” 
Mrs. Sargent had continued. “We’ve got 
enough widows and single women in now; 
what we want are the real mothers, who need 
shaking out of the groove!” 

Mrs. Sargent happened to be President of 
the Club at that time, so Mrs. Salisbury had 
only to ignore graciously the rather offensive 
phrasing of the invitation, and to await the 
news of her election, which duly and promptly 
arrived. 

And now Justine had been asked to speak 


The Treasure 


i45 


at the Forum! It was the most distasteful bit 
of information that had come Mrs. Salis¬ 
bury’s way in a long, long time! She felt in 
her heart a stinging resentment against Mrs. 
Sargent, with her mad notions of equality, and 
against Justine, who was so complacently and 
contentedly accepting this monstrous state of 
affairs. 

“That is very kind of Mrs. Sargent,” said 
she, fighting for dignity; “she is very much in¬ 
terested in working girls and their problems, 
and I suppose she thinks this might be a good 
advertisement for the school, too.” This idea 
had just come to Mrs. Salisbury, and she 
found it vaguely soothing. “But I don’t like 
the idea,” she ended firmly; “it—it seems very 
odd, very—very conspicuous. I should pre¬ 
fer you not to consider anything of the kind.” 

“I should prefer” was said in the tone that 
means “I command,” yet Justine was not satis¬ 
fied. 

“Oh, but why?” she asked. 

“If you force me to discuss it,” said Mrs. 
Salisbury, in sudden anger, “because you are 


146 


The Treasure 


my maid! My gracious, you are my maid,” 
she repeated, pent-up irritation finding an 
outlet at last. “There is such a relationship 
as mistress and maid, after all! While you 
are in my house you will do as I say. It is 
the mistress’s place to give orders, not to take 
them, not to have to argue and defend her¬ 
self-■” 

“Certainly, if it is a question about the work 
the maid is supposed to do,” Justine defended 
herself, with more spirit than the other 
woman had seen her show before. “But what 
she does with her leisure—why it’s just the 
same as what a clerk does with his leisure, no¬ 
body questions it, nobody-” 

“I tell you that I will not stand here and 
argue with you,” said Mrs. Salisbury, with 
more dignity in her tone than in her words. 
“I say that I don’t care to have my maid ex¬ 
ploited by a lot of fashionable women at a 
club, and that ends it! And I must add,” she 
went on, “that I am extremely surprised that 
Mrs. Sargent should approach you in such a 
matter, without consulting me!” 




The Treasure 


147 


“The relationship of mistress and maid,” 
Justine said slowly, “is what has always made 
the trouble. Men have decided what they 
want done in their offices, and never have any 
trouble in finding boys to fill the vacancies. 

But women expect-” 

“I really don’t care to listen to any further 
theories from that extraordinary school,” said 
Mrs. Salisbury decidedly. “I have told you 
what I expect you to do, and I know you are 
too sensible a girl to throw away a good po¬ 
sition-” 

“Mrs. Salisbury, if I intended to say any¬ 
thing in such a little talk that would reflect 
on this family, or even to mention it, it would 

be different, but, as it is-” 

“I should hope you wouldn't mention this 
family!” Mrs. Salisbury said hotly. “But 

even without that-” 

“It would be merely an outline of what the 
school is, and what it tries to do,” Justine in¬ 
terposed. “Miss Holley, our founder and 
President, was most anxious to have us inter- 






148 


The Treasure 


est the general public in this way, if ever we 
got a chance.” 

“What Miss Holley—whoever she is— 
wanted, or wants, is nothing to me!” Mrs. 
Salisbury said magnificently. “You know 
what I feel about this matter, and I have noth¬ 
ing more to say.” 

She left the kitchen on the very end of the 
last word, and Justine, perforce not answer¬ 
ing, hoped that the affair was concluded, once 
and for all. 

“For Mrs. Sargent may think she can ex¬ 
asperate me by patronizing my maid,” said 
Mrs. Salisbury guardedly, when telling her 
husband and daughter of the affair that even¬ 
ing, “but there is a limit to everything, and I 
have had about enough of this efficiency busi¬ 
ness !” 

“I can only beg, Mother dear, that you 
won’t have a row with Owen’s dear little 
vacillating, weak-minded ma,” said Sandy 
cheerfully. 

“No; but, seriously, don’t you both think 


The Treasure 


149 


it’s outrageous?” Mrs. Salisbury asked, look¬ 
ing from one to the other. 

“No-o; I see the girl’s point,” Kane Salis¬ 
bury said thoughtfully. “What she does with 
her afternoons off is her own affair, after all; 
and you can’t blame her, if a chance to step 
out of the groove comes along, for taking ad¬ 
vantage of it. Strictly, you have no call to 
interfere.” 

“Legally, perhaps I haven’t,” his wife con¬ 
ceded calmly. “But, thank goodness, my home 
is not yet a court of law. Besides, Daddy, if 
one of the young men in the bank did some¬ 
thing of which you disapproved, you would 
feel privileged to interfere.” 

“If he did something zvrong, Sally, not 
otherwise.” 

“And you would be perfectly satisfied to 
meet your janitor somewhere at dinner?” 

“No; the janitor’s colored, to begin with, 
and, more than that, he isn’t the type one 
meets. But, if he qualified otherwise, I 
wouldn’t mind meeting him just because he 
happened to be the janitor. Now, young For- 


The Treasure 


I S° 

rest turns up at the club for golf, and Sandy 
and I picked Fred Hall up the other day, com¬ 
ing back from the river.” Kane Salisbury, 
leaning back in his chair, watched the rings of 
smoke that rose from his cigar. “It’s a funny 
thing about you women,” he said lazily. “You 
keep wondering why smart girls won't go into 
housework, and yet, if you get a girl who isn't 
a mere stupid machine, you resent every sign 
she gives of being an intelligent human being. 
No two of you keep house alike, and you 
jump on the girl the instant she hangs a dish 
towel up the way you don’t. It’s you women 
who make life so hard for each other. Now, 
if any decent man saw a young fellow at the 
bottom of the ladder, who was as good and 
clever and industrious as Justine is, he’d be glad 
to give him a hand up. But no; that means 
she’s above her work, and has to be snubbed.” 

“Don’t talk so cynically, Daddy dear,” Mrs. 
Salisbury said, smiling over her fancy work, 
as one only half listening. 

“I tell you, a change is coming in all these 
things, Sally,” said the cynic, unruffled. 


The Treasure 


151 

“You bet there is!” his daughter seconded 
him from the favorite low seat that permitted 
her to rest her mouse-colored head against his 
knee. 

“Your mother’s a conservative, Sandy,” 
pursued the man of the house, encouraged, 
“but there’s going to be some domestic revo¬ 
lutionizing in the next few years. It’s 
hard enough to get a maid now; pretty soon 

it’ll be impossible. Then you women will 
have to sit down and work the thing out, and 
ask yourselves why young American girls 
won’t come into your homes, and eat the best 
food in the land, and get well paid for what 
they do. You’ll have to reduce the work of 
an American home to a system, that’s all, and 
what you want done that isn’t provided for 
in that system you’ll have to do yourselves. 
There’s something in the way you treat a girl 
now, or in what you expect her to do, that’s 
all wrong!” 

“It isn’t a question of too much work,” 
Mrs. Salisbury said. “They are much better 
off when they’re worked hard. And I notice 


1 S 2 


The Treasure 


that your bookkeepers are kept pretty busy, 
Kane,” she added neatly. 

“For an eight-hour day, Sally. But you ex¬ 
pect a twelve or fourteen-hour day from your 
housemaid- 

“If I pay a maid thirty-seven and a half 
dollars a month,” his wife averred, with pre¬ 
cision, “I expect her to do something for that 
thirty-seven dollars and a half!” 

“Well, but, Mother, she does!” Alexandra 
contributed eagerly. “In Justine’s case she 
does an awful lot! She plans, and saves, and 
thinks about things. Sometimes she sits writ¬ 
ing menus and crossing things out for an hour 
at a time.” 

“And then Justine’s a pioneer; in a way 
she’s an experiment,” the man said. “Experi¬ 
ments are always expensive. That's why the 
club is interested, I suppose. But in a few 
years probably the woods will be full of gradu¬ 
ate servants—everyone'll have one! They'll 
have their clubs and their plans together, and 
that will solve some of the social side of the 
old trouble. They-•” 




The Treasure 


*53 


“Still, I notice that Mrs. Sargent herself 
doesn’t employ graduate servants!” Mrs. 
Salisbury, who had been following a wander¬ 
ing line of thought, threw in darkly. 

“Because they haven’t any graduates for 
homes like hers, Mother,” Alexandra supplied. 
“She keeps eight or nine housemaids. The 
college is only to supply the average home, 
don’t you see? Where only one or two are 
kept—that’s their idea.” 

“And do they suppose that the average 
American woman is willing to go right on pay¬ 
ing thirty-seven dollars and fifty cents for a 
maid?” Mrs. Salisbury asked mildly. 

“For five in family, Mother! Justine would 
only be thirty if three dear little strangers 
hadn’t come to brighten your home,” Sandy 
reminded her. “Besides,” she went on, “Jus¬ 
tine was telling me only a day or two ago of 
their latest scheme—they are arranging so 
that a girl can manage two houses in the same 
neighborhood. She gets breakfast for the 
Joneses, say; leaves at nine for market; orders 
for both families; goes to the Smiths and 


154 


The Treasure 


serves their hearty meal at noon; goes back to 
the Joneses at five, and serves dinner.” 

“And what does she get for all this?” Mrs. 
Salisbury asked in a skeptical tone. 

“The Joneses pay her twenty-five, I believe, 
and the Smiths fifteen for two in each family.” 

“What’s to prevent the two families having 
all meals together,” Mrs. Salisbury asked, “in¬ 
stead of having to patch out with meals when 
they had no maid ?” 

“Well, I suppose they could. Then she’d get 
her original thirty, and five more for the two 
extra—you see, it comes out the same, thirty- 
five dollars a month. Perhaps families will 
pool their expenses that way some day. It 
would save buying, too, and table linen, and 
gas and fuel. And it would be fun! All at 
our house this month, and all at Aunt Mat’s 
next month!” 

“There’s one serious objection to sharing a 
maid,” Mrs. Salisbury presently submitted; 
“she would tell the other family all your pri¬ 
vate business.” 

“If they chose to pump her, she might,” 


The Treasure 


i 55 


Alexandra said, with unintentional rebuke, 
and Mr. Salisbury added amusedly: 

“No, no, no, Mother! That’s an exploded 
theory. How much has Justine told you of 
her last place?” 

“But that’s no proof she wouldn't, Kane,” 
Mrs. Salisbury ended the talk by rising from 
her chair, taking another nearer the reading 
lamp, and opening a new magazine. “Jus¬ 
tine is a sensible girl,” she added, after a mo¬ 
ment. “I have always said that. When all 
the discussing and theorizing in the world is 
done, it comes down to this: a servant in my 
house shall do as I say. I have told her that 
I dislike this ridiculous club idea, and I expect 
to hear no more of the matter!” 

There came a day in December when Mrs. 
Salisbury came home from the Forum Club 
in mid-afternoon. Her face was a little pale 
as she entered the house, her lips tightly set. 
It was a Thursday afternoon, and Justine’s 
kitchen was empty. Lettuce and peeled pota¬ 
toes were growing crisp in yellow bowls of 


The Treasure 


156 

ice water, breaded cutlets were in the ice chest, 
a custard cooled in a north window. 

Mrs. Salisbury walked rapidly through the 
lower rooms, came back to the library, and 
sat down at her desk. A fire was laid in the 
wide, comfortable fireplace, but she did not 
light it. She sat, hatted, veiled and gloved, 
staring fixedly ahead of her for some mo¬ 
ments. Then she said aloud, in a firm but 
quiet voice: “Well, this positively ends it!” 

A delicate film of dust obscured the shining 
surface of the writing table. Mrs. Salisbury’s 
mouth curved into a cold smile when she saw 
it; and again she spoke aloud. 

“Thirty-seven dollars and fifty cents, in¬ 
deed!” she said. “Ha!” 

Nearly two hours later Alexandra rushed 
in. Alexandra looked her prettiest; she was 
wearing new furs for the first time; her face 
was radiantly fresh, under the sweep of her 
velvet hat. She found her mother stretched 
comfortably on the library couch with a book. 
Mrs. Salisbury smiled, and there was a certain 
placid triumph in her smile. 


The Treasure 


1 57 


“Here you are, Mother !” Alexandra burst 
out joyously. “Mother, I’ve just had the most 
extraordinary experience of my life!” She 
sat down beside the couch, her eyes dancing, 
her cheeks two roses, and pushed back her 
furs, and flung her gloves aside. “My dear,” 
said Alexandra, catching up the bunch of vio¬ 
lets she held for an ecstatic sniff, and then 
dropping it in her lap again, “wait until I tell 
you—I’m engaged!” 

“My darling girl-” Mrs. Salisbury said, 

rapturously, faintly. 

“To Owen, of course,” Alexandra rushed 
on radiantly. “But wait until I tell you! It’s 
the most awful thing I ever did in my life, 
in a way,” she interrupted herself to say more 
soberly. Her voice died away, and her eyes 
grew dreamy. 

Mrs. Salisbury’s heart, rising giddily to 
heaven on a swift rush of thanks, felt a cold 
check. 

“How do you mean awful, dear?” she said 
apprehensively. 

“Well, wait, and I’ll tell you,” Alexandra 



The Treasure 


158 

said, recalled and dimpling again. “I met Jim 
Vance and Owen this morning at about 
twelve, and Jim simply got red as a beet, and 
vanished—poor Jim!” The girl paid the 
tribute of a little sigh to the discarded suitor. 
“So then Owen asked me to lunch with him— 
right there in the Women’s exchange, so it 
was quite comme il fant, Mother,” she pur¬ 
sued, “and, my dear! he told me, as calmly 
as that !—that he might go to New York when 
Jim goes—Jim’s going to visit a lot of Eastern 
relatives!—so that he, Owen I mean, could 
study some Eastern settlement houses and get 
some ideas-” 

“I think the country is going mad on this 
subject of settlement houses, and reforms, and 
hygiene!” Mrs. Salisbury said, with some 
sharpness. “However, go on!” 

“Well, Owen spoke to me a little about— 
about Jim’s liking me, you know,” Alexandra 
continued. “You know Owen can get awfully 
red and choky over a thing like that,” she 
broke off to say animatedly. “But to-day he 
wasn’t—he was just brotherly and sweet. 



The Treasure 


i 59 


And, Mother, he got so confidential, you 
know, that I simply pulled my courage to¬ 
gether, and I determined to talk honestly to 
him. I clasped my hands—I could see in one 
of the mirrors that I looked awfully nice, and 
that helped!—I clasped my hands, and I 
looked right into his eyes, and I said, quietly, 
you know, ‘Owen,’ I said Tm going to tell 
you the truth. You ask me why I don’t care 
for Jim; this is the reason. I like you too 
much to care for any other man that way. I 
don’t want you to say anything now, Owen,’ 
I said, ‘or to think I expect you to tell me 
that you have always cared for me. That’d 
be too flat. And I’m not going to say that 
I’ll never care for anyone else, for I’m only 
twenty, and I don’t know. But I couldn’t see 
so much of you, Owen,’ I said, ‘and not care 
for you, and it seems as natural to tell you so 
as it would for me to tell another girl. You 
worry sometimes because you can’t remember 
your father,’ I said, ‘and because your mother 
is so undemonstrative with you; but I want 
you to think, the next time you feel sort of 


i6o 


The Treasure 


out of it, that there is a woman who really 
and truly thinks that you are the best man 
in the world- 

Mrs. Salisbury had risen to a sitting posi¬ 
tion ; her eyes, fixed upon her daughter’s face, 
were filled with utter horror. 

“You are not serious, my child!” she 
gasped. “Alexandra, tell me that this is some 
monstrous joke-” 

“Serious! I never was more serious in my 
life,” the girl said stoutly. “I said just that. 
It was easy enough, after I once got started. 
And I thought to myself, even then, that if he 
didn’t care he’d be decent enough to say so 
honestly-” 

“But, my child—my child!” the mother 
said, beside herself with outraged pride. “You 
cannot mean that you so far forgot a wom¬ 
an’s natural delicacy—her natural shrinking— 

her dignity- Why, what must Owen think 

of you! Can’t you see what a dreadful thing 
you’ve done, dear!” Her mind, working des¬ 
perately for an escape from the unbearable 
situation, seized upon a possible explanation. 






The Treasure 


161 


“My darling/’ she said, “you must try at once 
to convince him that you were only joking— 
you can say half-laughingly-” 

“But wait!” Alexandra interrupted, un¬ 
ruffled. “He put his hand over mine, and he 
turned as red as a beet—I wish you could 

have seen his face, Mother!—and he said- 

But,” and the happy color flooded her face, “I 
honestly can’t tell you what he said, Mother,” 
Alexandra confessed. “Only it was darling , 
and he is honestly the best man I ever saw in 
my life!” 

“But, dearest, dearest,” her mother said, 
with desperate appeal. “Don’t you see that 
you can’t possibly allow things to remain this 
way? Your dignity, dear, the most precious 
thing a girl has, you’ve simply thrown it to the 
winds! Do you want Owen to remind you 
some day that you were the one to speak 
first?” Her voice sank distressfully, a shamed 
red burned in her cheeks. “Do you want 
Owen to be able to say that you cared, and 
admitted that you cared, before he did?” 




162 


The Treasure 


Alexandra, staring blankly at her mother, 
now burst into a gay laugh. 

“Oh, Mother, aren’t you darling —but 
you’re so funny!” she said. “Don’t you sup¬ 
pose I know Owen well enough to know 
whether he cares for me or not? He doesn’t 
know it himself, that’s the whole point, or 
rather he didn’t, for he does now! And he’ll 
go on caring more and more every minute, 
you’ll see! He might have been months find¬ 
ing it out, even if he didn’t go off to New 
York with Jim, and marry some little design¬ 
ing dolly-mop of an actress, or some girl he 
met on the train. Owen’s the sort of dear, 
big, old, blundering fellow that you have to 
protect, Mother. And it came up so natu¬ 
rally—if you’d been there ” 

“I thank Heaven I was not there!” Mrs. 
Salisbury said feelingly. “Came up naturally! 
Alexandra, what are you made of? Where 
are your natural feelings? Why, do you 
realize that your Grandmother Porter kept 
your grandfather waiting three months for an 
answer, even? She lived to be an old, old 



The Treasure 


163 


lady, and she used to say that a woman ought 
never let her husband know how much she 
cared for him, and Grandfather Porter re¬ 
spected and admired your grandmother until 
the day of her death!” 

“A dear, cold-blooded old lady she must 
have been!” said Alexandra, unimpressed. 

“On the contrary,” Mrs. Salisbury said 
quickly. “She was a beautiful and dignified 
woman. And when your father first began 
to call upon me,” she went on impressively, 
“and Mattie teased me about him, I was so 
furious—my feelings were so outraged!—that 
I went upstairs and cried a whole evening, 
and wouldn’t see him for days!” 

“Well, dearest,” Alexandra said cheerfully, 
“You may have been a perfect little lady, but 
it’s painfully evident that I take after the 
other side of the house! As for Owen ever 
having the nerve to suggest that I gave him 

a pretty broad hint-” the girl’s voice was 

carried away on a gale of cheerful laughter. 
“He’d get no dessert for weeks to come!” 
she threatened gaily. “You know I’m con- 



164 


The Treasure 


vinced, Mother,” Sandy went on more seri¬ 
ously, “that this business of a man’s doing all 
the asking is going out. When women have 
their own industrial freedom, and their own 
well-paid work, it’ll be a great compliment to 
suggest to a man that one’s willing to give 
everything up, and keep his house and raise 
his children for him. And if, for any rea¬ 
son, he shouldn’t care for that girl, she’ll not 
be embarrassed-” 

Mrs. Salisbury shut her eyes, her face and 
form rigid, one hand spasmodically clutching 
the couch. 

“Alexandra, I beg -” she said faintly, “I 

entreat that you will not expect me to listen 
to such outrageous and indelicate and coarse 
—yes, coarse!—theories! Think what you will, 
but don’t ask your mother-” 

“Now, listen, darling,” Alexandra said 
soothingly, kneeling down and gathering her 
mother affectionately in her arms, “Owen did 
every bit of this except the very first second 
and, if you’ll just forget it, in a few months 
he’ll be thinking he did it all! Wait until you 





The Treasure 


165 

see him; he’s walking on air! He’s dazed. My 
dear”—the strain of happy confidence was 
running smoothly again—“my dear, we 
lunched together, and then we went out in the 
car to Burning Woods, and sat there on the 
porch, and talked and talked. It was per¬ 
fectly wonderful! Now, he’s gone to tell his 
mother, but he’s coming back to take us all 
to dinner. Is that all right? And, Mother, 
that reminds me, we are going to live in the 
new Settlement House, and have a girl like 
Justine!” 

“What!” Mrs. Salisbury said, smitten sick 
with disappointment. 

“Or Justine herself, if you’ll let us have 
her,” Sandy went on. “You see, living in that 
big Sargent house-” 

“Do you mean that Owen’s mother doesn’t 
want to give up that house?” Mrs. Salisbury 
asked coldly. “I thought it was Owen’s?” 

“It is Owen’s, Mother, but fancy living 
there!” Sandy said vivaciously. “Why, I’d 
have to keep seven or eight maids, and do 



i66 


The Treasure 


nothing but manage them, and do just as 
everyone else does!” 

“You’d be the richest young matron in 
town,” her mother said bitterly. 

“Oh, I know, Mother, but that seems sort 
of mean to the other girls! Anyway, we’d 
much rather live in the ducky little Settlement 
house, and entertain our friends at the Club, 
do you see? And Justine is to run a little 
cooking school, do you see? For everyone 
says that management of food and money is 
the most important thing to teach the poorer 
class. Won’t that be great?” 

“I personally can't agree with you,” the 
mother said lifelessly. “Here I spend all my 
life since your babyhood trying to make 
friends for you among the nicest people, try¬ 
ing to establish our family upon an equal 
basis with much richer people, and you, in¬ 
stead of living as you should, with beautiful 
things about you, choose to go down to River 
Street, and drudge among the slums!” 

“Oh, come, Mother; River Street is the 
breeziest, prettiest part of town, with the river 


The Treasure 167 

and those fields opposite. Wait until we clean 
it up, and get some gardens going-” 

“As for Justine, I am done with her,” con¬ 
tinued the older woman dispassionately. “All 
this has rather put it out of my head, but I 
meant to tell you at once, she goes out of my 
house this week! Against my express wish, 
she was the guest of the Forum Club to-day. 
'Miss J. C. Harrison/ the program said, and I 
could hardly believe my eyes when I saw Jus¬ 
tine! She had on a black charmeuse gown, 
black velvet about her hair—and I was sup¬ 
posed to sit there and listen to my own maid! 
I slipped out; it was too much. To-morrow 
morning/’ Mrs. Salisbury ended dramatically, 
“I dismiss her!” 

“Mother!” said Alexandra, aghast. “What 
reason will you give her?” 

“I shall give her no reason,” Mrs. Salis¬ 
bury said sternly. “I am through with apolo¬ 
gies to servants! To-morrow I shall apply at 
Crosby’s for a good, old-fashioned maid, who 
doesn’t have to have her daily bath, and 
doesn’t expect to be entertained at my club!” 



The Treasure 


168 

“But, listen, darling,” Alexandra pleaded. 
''Don't make a fuss now. Justine was my 
darling belle-mere's guest to-day, don’t you 
see? It’ll be so awkward, scrapping right in 
the face of Owen’s news. Couldn’t you sort 
of shelve the Justine question for a while?” 

“Dearie, be advised,” Mrs. Salisbury said, 
with solemn warning. “You don't want a girl 
like that, dear. You will be a somebody, 
Sandy. You can’t do just what any other girl 
would do, as Owen Sargent’s wife! Don’t 
live with Mrs. Sargent if you don’t want to, 
but take a pretty house, dear. Have two or 
three little maids, in nice caps and aprons. 
Why, Alice Snow, whose husband is merely 
an automobile salesman, has a lovely home! 
It’s small, of course, but you could have your 
choice!” 

“Well, nothing’s settled!” Alexandra rose 
to go upstairs, gathered her furs about her. 
“Only promise me to let Justine’s question 
stand,” she begged. 

“Well,” Mrs. Salisbury consented unwill- 
ingly. 


The Treasure 169 

“Ah, there’s Dad!” Alexandra cried sud¬ 
denly, as the front door opened and shut. 
With a joyous rush, she flew to meet him, and 
Mrs. Salisbury could imagine, from the 
sounds she heard, exactly how Sandy and her 
great news and her furs and her father’s 
kisses were all mixed up together. “What— 
what—what—why, what am I going to do for 
a girl?” “Oh, Dad, darling, say that you’re 
glad!” “Luckiest fellow this side of the 
Rocky Mountains, and I’ll tell him so!” “And 
you and Mother to dine with us every week, 
promise that, Dad!” 

She heard them settle down on the lowest 
step, Sandy obviously in her father’s lap; 
heard the steady murmur of confidence and 
advice. 

“Wise girl, wise girl,” she heard the man’s 
voice say. “That keeps you in touch with life, 
Sandy; that’s real. And then, if some day 
you have reasons for wanting a bigger house 
and a more quiet neighborhood-” Sev¬ 

eral frantic kisses interrupted the speaker 



170 The Treasure 

here, but he presently went on: “Why, you 
can always move! Meantime, you and Owen 
are helping less fortunate people, you’re build¬ 
ing up a lot of wonderful associations-” 

Well, it was all probably for the best; it 
would turn out quite satisfactorily for every¬ 
one, thought the mother, sitting in the darken¬ 
ing library, and staring rather drearily before 
her. Sandy would have children, and chil¬ 
dren must have big rooms and sunshine, if it 
can be managed possibly. The young Sar¬ 
gents would fall nicely into line, as household¬ 
ers, as parents, as hospitable members of so¬ 
ciety. 

But it was all so different from her dreams, 
of a giddy, spoiled Sandy, the petted wife of 
an adoring rich man; a Sandy despotically 
and yet generously ruling servants, not con¬ 
sulting Justine as an equal, in a world of 
working women-- 

And she was not even to have the satisfac¬ 
tion of discharging Justine! The maid had 




The Treasure 


171 

her rights, her place in the scheme of things, 
her pride. 

“I declare, times have changed!” Mrs. 
Salisbury said to herself involuntarily. She 
mused over the well-worn phrase; she had 
never used it herself before; its truth struck 
her forcibly for the first time. 

“I remember my mother saying that,” 
thought she, “and how old-fashioned and con¬ 
ventional we thought her! I remember she 
said it when Mat and I went to dances, after 
we were married; it seemed almost wrong to 
her! Dear me! And I remember Ma’s hor¬ 
ror when Mat went to a hospital for her first 
baby. 'If there is a thing that belongs at 
home,’ Ma said, 'it does seem to me it’s a 
baby!’ And my asking people to dinner by 
telephone, and the Fosters having two bath¬ 
rooms in their house—Ma thought that such 
a ridiculous affectation! But what would she 
say now? For those things were only trifles, 
after all,” Mrs. Salisbury sighed, in all hon¬ 
esty. “But now, why, the world is simply be¬ 
ing turned upside down with these crazy new 


172 


The Treasure 


notions!” And again she paused, surprised to 
hear herself using another old, familiar 
phrase. “Ma used to say that very thing, 
too,” said Mrs. Salisbury to herself. “Poor 
Ma!” 


THE END 




THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS 
GARDEN CITY, N. Y. 













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